


Every Open Door

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Coming of Age, Dirty Dancing AU, Discussion of Race/Ethnicity/Class, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Hints of Shyanara, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mild Period-Typical Homophobia, No One Puts Shane Madej in a Corner, Pining, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: It’s early on a bright mid-May morning when Shane Madej steps out of the car to begin the last real summer of his life.The year is 1963, he is twenty-two years old, and the summer’s stretched out like a promise in front of him: one last hurrah, before the desk waiting for him in his father’s office claims him.Or: the Dirty Dancing AU Shane Madej sort of a little bit asked for. ("A professional ballroom dancer…my stars!")





	Every Open Door

**Author's Note:**

> You won’t find a scene-for-scene copy of the classic 1980s coming-of-age film Dirty Dancing here, but I’ve kept key touchstones and a bit of the juicier dialogue. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should watch it because it’s swoony af. In the movie, Baby is like 17 and that’s gross, so for my purposes Shane and Ryan are closer in age and both adults. If you don’t think Shane would be Baby in this wildly fictional scenario, you’re wrong and also fight me.
> 
> IMHO the following are essential pieces of any Dirty Dancing AU, and you will find them all within:  
> 1) Someone experiences a sexual coming-of-age at a resort in the Catskills;  
> 2) against the tumultuous backdrop of the early 1960s;  
> 3) with someone who wears extremely tight t-shirts and has arms like Patrick Swayze;  
> 4) while learning to dance in a fashion that could be described as dirty;  
> 5) and at some point they carry a watermelon.
> 
> Please pay particular attention to #2. I’ve kept the period-typical homophobia and racism on the very mild end of what could be considered historically accurate because nobody reads fic to be miserable, and you won’t find slurs stronger than “fairy” within, but you can’t write a ’60s AU with a gay romance and a main who isn’t white without getting into it. Thank you to Paulie/@aspookycryptidsock for the beta!

*

It’s early on a bright mid-May morning when Shane Madej steps out of the car to begin the last real summer of his life.

The year is 1963, he is twenty-two years old, and the summer’s stretched out like a promise in front of him: one last hurrah, before the desk waiting for him in his father’s office claims him. And also like a threat: _soon you’re going to take your seat at that desk, and in sixty years you’ll die there._

Shane stretches, hearing his neck and shoulders crack ominously. He drove all the way here alone, twelve hours in a car from the University of Chicago to this resort in the Catskills, the Beach Boys blaring on the radio and most of his worldly possessions crammed in the trunk. His family used to come here to Kellerman’s all together, when he was a kid, but now they’re scattered to the wind: his sister Cynthia and her husband and the new baby up in Michigan; Scott and Trudy and the kids near their parents in Connecticut.

And Shane, alone, finishing up college in Chicago. Emerging triumphant with a degree in hand and his future all laid out in front of him, ready to be pulled on like an over-starched shirt with a too-tight collar.

Shane tosses his keys to the valet, a chipper kid in a pressed uniform who Shane doesn’t recognize from past seasons. His family’s spent almost every summer here, stretching as far back as Shane can remember, but the demands of school and his life in Chicago have prevented him from coming back for the last few.

Everything looks exactly the same, and Shane assumes that’s part of the appeal.  You spend summer after summer with the same families, watching your kids grow older with their kids, playing the same bridge games and eating the same stodgy food and dancing the same foxtrots with the same dance pros.

It must be a real comfort, to cloister yourselves away here and pretend the world isn’t changing.

The valet pops the trunk and starts pulling out bags. “To your parents’ cabin, I assume, Mr. Madej?”

Shane used to just be _Shane_ , to the staff here, and the _Mr. Madej_ rankles. Soon he’ll be Mr. Madej full-time, and he’s not ready for that just yet. He can feel the necktie noose start to tighten.

“Ugh. Please, it’s Shane,” he corrects, and the kid nods. “Yes, up to the cabin would be perfect, thanks. They’re all in the dining room for breakfast?”

“Waffles with powdered sugar and an assortment of fresh fruits today, and an omelet buffet!” the kid chirps, like he’s got it memorized. Probably he does.

Shane slips him a dollar and starts the walk up the hill to the main lodge. It’s a beautiful morning, clear and cool just starting to warm, but he’s almost too tired to appreciate it.

The minute he steps in the door of the lodge, he’s hit by familiar childhood smells: sweet sugar from breakfast, pine-scented air fresheners, Chanel No. 5. He’s overwhelmed by the sheer nostalgia of it, and by the way it makes his head start to pound almost immediately with the need to be back outside with the real pines. 

“Well, would you look what the cat dragged in,” comes a familiar voice from behind him, ringing clear and playful. “Are my eyes playing tricks, or have you gotten taller? Only you know I said that wasn’t allowed.”

He spins around. Sure enough, there she is, looking exactly as he remembers, just older and prettier. Certainly not a single solitary inch taller herself, although it’s possible her hair’s even curlier.

“Sara Rubin, as I live and breathe,” Shane says, a breathy impression of the older ladies who will descend upon him to pinch his cheeks the minute he steps foot in the dining room. “It turns out I had a couple of inches left in me after all. I don’t want to hear a word from you about it.”

She laughs as he catches her up in a big bear hug, spinning her around so her striped day dress swirls around her. He’s not even sure he’s allowed to do this, now—it’s been a while, and after all they’re not kids anymore, but she returns the hug like it’s been no time at all instead of four years since they’ve seen each other.

“No, it looks good on you. Hail the conquering graduate,” she says when he sets her back on her feet. “How does it feel, having the degree in hand?”

“Feels the same,” Shane says with a shrug. “Funny how one day you get to be a fun-loving kid and then one slip of paper comes around and suddenly everybody’s got expectations. How’s Bryn Mawr? You’ve got, what, two more years before they start foisting some Princeton man or another at you?”

“Just one,” Sara corrects, grimacing. “And they’re already foisting away, but I don’t think much of them. I’ve met so many fascinating women at Bryn Mawr, who even has the time?”

Her eyes are twinkling. Shane wants to ask—he’s heard plenty about those Seven Sisters women’s colleges, likely rumors all—but some sense of propriety or politeness holds him back.

“That’s my girl,” he says instead, reaching out to tug at a tight curl. “Princeton men are no good.”

“I’m starting to think _men_ are no good,” she says. “Present company excluded, of course.”

As far back as Shane can remember, Sara’s father has run the resort. The Rubins don’t own Kellerman’s, but they manage the day-to-day operations. Sara’s spent every summer of her life here, helping her parents out by day and running amok with guests’ kids by night.

“Your family’s in there,” she says, nodding to the dining room doors beyond the lobby. “You’ll want to go say hello.” It’s a statement of fact, but nevertheless she makes it sound like a question, as if she’s already picked up on Shane’s ambivalence.

“Will I?” Shane asks, with a wry smile that’s almost a grimace. “Want is a strong word.”

And it is a strong word. It feels like all he does these days is _want_. He wants for more time, and for freedom of a future undecided, and for the West, and for things he daren’t even formulate into thoughts yet even if they’re just for himself.

“Well, they’re in there all the same, starting to worry about you,” she says, giving him a little nudge with her shoe. “I’ll be at the lake later, if I can sneak away. And there’ll be the dumb dance tonight, to kick off the season.”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Shane promises. He’s never been one for dancing. He’s all left feet, too gangly to make his limbs behave themselves, but ritualistic self-flagellation in the form of pushing his sweaty palm into one of the resort’s professional dance teachers’ hands for an awkward samba is a tradition here at Kellerman’s. He’s numb to it now.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Sara says with a reassuring smile.

Shane squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and heads for breakfast and his family.

*

There’s nothing _wrong_ with Shane’s family, which is why his dread makes him feel so guilty.

His parents are loving and decent and kind. He was close with Cynthia and Scott once, the three of them only a few years apart each and thick as thieves as children, but they have their own families now. Shane can only watch, bemused, as the sister he ran wild with cradles her own baby in her arms.

They all seem terribly happy, and not at all like their lives are missing something. Shane wonders whether there’s a gene for normalcy that his brother and sister got that somehow missed him over. Or maybe he’ll take a seat at that desk in September and it’ll click into place, and he’ll suddenly want it all—the wife and the kids and the house in the suburbs.

He expects Cynthia and Scott will bring their families here every summer for the rest of their lives, until their children are grown. Shane tries to imagine himself here with them in five years, in ten, wrangling kids through the buffet and taking his seat next to a pretty woman.

It’s not a bad vision. It wouldn’t be a bad _life_ , and there’s nothing wrong with it. He just can’t quite make it come in clear.

Shane shuffles through the big double doors to the general hubbub of breakfast.

“There he is!” Cynthia exclaims as soon as she spots him across the room, dashing any hope he had of a quiet entrance.

“You look so tired!” Shane’s mother Sherry says first thing, even before _hello_ , smoothing his hair away from his face. “Poor baby, did you drive through the night? When’s the last time you had a haircut, you look like a delinquent.”

“We’re not doing that, you can’t—please don’t call me ‘baby,’” Shane says through gritted teeth. “I’m twenty-two years old, I’m a college graduate, and it’s not cute now.”

She shushes him, fussing over his collar so it lies flat and straight.

“Hello, son,” Mark says formally, half-standing and holding his hand out for a handshake. His grip is firm, and his hand dwarfs even Shane’s big one. “Glad you got here safe. That’s a long drive.”

Shane feels all of fourteen again, and not like a man at all. Like a boy.

“Good to see you, man,” Scott says, offering his hand out for a handshake as well. “The old place is just the same, isn’t it?”

Shane looks around. The dining room’s been lightly redecorated since the last time he was here, but the overall impression of the place _is_ exactly the same: it’s frozen in 1952, untouched by the changing times or by the growing urgency of the real world. Except for a few staff he doesn’t recognize, even the faces are all the same.

“Hasn’t changed a bit,” Shane agrees, sitting down and stealing a forkful of waffle off Scott’s plate. A woman comes around with a coffee pot, and he smiles gratefully as she fills his mug. “Hiya, Maisie.”

“Hiya, yourself,” she says with a snort. “Thought we wouldn’t see your face around here anymore. That Madej kid, I told ‘em in the kitchen, he’s a college boy now. Too good for us.”

“Chicago’s a long way away,” Shane protests, even though she’s just teasing. “And I worked odd jobs most summers. I couldn’t get back, but I missed you all loads.”

“They all say that,” Maisie says with a shake of her head and a shrug of her broad shoulders. “Good to have you back, baby.”

“I’m going to need everybody to stop calling me that,” Shane announces. “Seeing as how there’s an actual baby here, and all. Wouldn’t want to confuse her, thinking everybody’s talking to her when they mean me.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want the infant to be confused,” Shane’s father agrees from behind his newspaper.

Nothing’s changed at all. To his father, to his whole family, Shane will always be the kid brother, to be alternately teased and babied. Shane loves his father, but the idea of working alongside him day in and day out, the constant gentle condescension shaping how all his coworkers and clients view him, makes him feel itchy and claustrophobic.

“Shane, really,” his mother says. “You couldn’t have gotten a haircut before graduation? I’m going to set you up an appointment with the barber here.”

It’s going to be a long summer. It’s going to be a long rest of his life.

*

That night at the opening season dance, Shane discovers it’s not _entirely_ the same faces.

He’s spent the day sleeping off his drive, lounging outside like a lizard who hasn’t seen the sun in months. By five o’clock he rouses himself to clean up for dinner and dancing.  

Folks dress for dinner here, though rarely so formal as full suits and ties, so he puts on proper pants and throws a dinner jacket over his button-down. His mother’s right, he does need a haircut, but he does his best with the thick, floofy mess on his head.

Dinner passes in a blur, lots of old family friends checking in to congratulate him on his graduation. They all slip him envelopes containing checks, and Shane pockets them with genuine thanks even though he feels strange about it.

Max Rubin pops by to welcome them, with Sara on his arm.

“Shane, you’re looking well. Bit scraggly!” he bellows—Max is a bellower—with a hearty handshake.

“So they keep telling me,” Shane agrees, taking the hand offered as well as the envelope that makes its way into his pocket.  

“I hear you’re joining the family business in the fall,” Max says. “Your dad will be lucky to have you, a good mind like yours.”  

“So they keep telling _me_ ,” Shane’s father says, but he looks pleased. It makes Shane’s stomach ache, the proud look on his dad’s face every time anybody mentions Shane’s upcoming plans.

“Enjoy your night,” Max says. “The pros will be opening up the dancing any minute. Got a real great couple this year, back for the third year in a row. I’ll be sorry to lose the boy, I think he’s headed home to California after the season. I took a chance on him and I’m glad I did.”

Shane’s heart leaps— _California!_ —but Max is already walking away, Sara trailing behind him.

“Save a dance for me, Sar,” he says to her retreating back, and she turns around and gives him finger guns.

A few minutes later dinner dishes are cleared away, and the professional dancers come out onto the floor to kick off the dancing. Kellerman’s employs a few dancers every season, to entertain the guests by night and provide dancing lessons by day. Shane’s mom has taken lessons a few times.

Shane doesn’t recognize this couple, though. He’d definitely remember them, if he’d seen them before. The man’s perhaps his own age, perhaps a bit younger, slight but well-built, with black hair and dark eyes and tan skin. He might be Asian, but Shane can’t say for sure. The woman on his arm is young too, blonde and lithe and ghost-pale, almost taller than the man.

The music kicks in, brassy and rhythmic, and the couple begins to dance one of those complicated Latin-inspired dances Shane could never manage. They twirl together seamlessly, and Shane’s transfixed by the swing of their hips and the speed of their feet as they pick out tricky steps. He’s even more transfixed by their brilliant smiles. They’re like sunshine, the pair of them; the man in particular has such a wide, white grin that it’s almost too blinding to look straight at.

Coming out of a spin, the man looks right at Shane. He lifts an eyebrow before leading the woman the other direction. Shane looks away. It must be a lot of work; he’s warm just watching them spin apart and press in close, the man’s capable arms lifting the woman at the end like she weighs nothing at all.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

Shane turns around, and Zach Kornfeld’s materialized at his side. Zach’s family has been coming to Kellerman’s for the last decade or so, and he and Zach have always been friendly, if not close.

“Yes, she is,” Shane agrees.

“Her name’s Kelsey,” Zach says. “I took a few lessons with her last year just for the excuse to talk to her. Real sweet, and a laugh riot to boot. She likes comics, isn’t that wild?”

“Wild,” Shane agrees, not really paying attention. “Who’s the fellow? I don’t recognize him either.”

“Ryan—something-or-other, I don’t remember. Beats me what a guy from Hollywood’s doing out here in the middle of nowhere, but he’s got moves.”

Shane makes a little “hmm” noise. He should really stop staring now that the dance is over and Kelsey and Ryan have broken apart to lead guests out onto the floor, but something about Ryan’s easy smile has him coming back for more, sneaking little looks.

“Want me to introduce you?” Zach asks, peeping over at him.

“I—sorry, what?” Shane reigns himself in, makes himself pay attention.

“I can introduce you to Kelsey, if you like. You weren’t being subtle, staring like that. Or I’m sure Sara could, she’s friendly with the staff. Have yourself a little summer fling.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Shane says, but his eyes are tracking Ryan’s hips across the dance floor. He knows he can’t look, that it isn’t safe to look, but he doesn’t want to miss another smile.

*

The first week at Kellerman’s passes in a summertime blur. Shane takes his brother’s kids to the lake and lets them toddle around in the sand while he dips his feet in the water. He sits with Cynthia while she takes a watercolor painting class, bouncing baby Christine on his knee to free up Cyn’s hands and staring out the window.

He plays beach volleyball two-on-two with and Zach and Ned and TJ, while Sara and some of her college girlfriends paint their toenails and heckle from nearby lounge chairs.

Sometimes he watches the dancing classes, when he can find a decent excuse. He accompanies his mother to a couple of her group classes, keeping a safe distance at the bar while Kelsey teaches lines of tipsy middle-aged women the box step. One afternoon, Shane is rewarded when Ryan and a few other men on staff show up to partner them.

He watches Ryan waltz partner after partner around the room with detached, professional grace. At one point another of the guys—a man with floppy blond hair and a ripped white t-shirt, fit in a lean, careless sort of way—must say something funny, because Ryan throws his head back and _laughs_.

It echoes through the room, loud enough that Shane can hear it at the bar, and he feels a tingle in his wrists. It could just be from the G&T, which is the third Shane’s had this afternoon already, but he knows it isn’t.

After the lesson, Ryan makes his way over to the bar. Once he realizes what’s happening, Shane freezes on his stool.

“Hey Curly, how about some water?”

“Sure thing, friend,” the bartender (whose hair is, indeed, curly) says, filling up a glass and sliding it down the bar. Ryan downs it on one gulp. Shane can’t help himself; he gets a peep at the long line of Ryan’s throat, smooth and wet-looking. This close, Shane can see the droplets of sweat sneaking down under the tight-fitting black t-shirt he’s wearing.

“You’re a good dancer,” Shane says stupidly. He’s not a meek guy usually, but here in this situation he feels suddenly shy. Curly snickers, and then tries to hide it with a cough.

“Thanks,” Ryan says with a sideways little grin. “You’re the youngest Madej kid, right? Your mom took some lessons with me last summer. Swell lady, but she’s got two left feet. She bragged about you a lot, off at college.”

“She’s very nice,” Shane agrees, embarrassed that Ryan already seems to know an awful lot about him.  Such is life at Kellerman’s. He would rather not be talking about his mother right now, but here they are. “I inherited the two left feet, I’m afraid. It might as well be magic to me, what you can do out there.”

“¡ _Ay_!” Curly mutters to himself, drying a glass and shaking his head like he’s in physical pain watching Shane stumble his way through this.

“It’s just hard work and practice,” Ryan says. “And rhythm. You should sign up for lessons, I’m sure Kelsey could knock some rhythm into you. I’ve seen worse cases.”

“Doubt it,” Shane says, sliding off the bar stool. Ryan sets the glass down on the counter and wipes his forehead with the towel around his neck. He looks up at Shane, and up and up and up.

“Jesus, you’re big,” he says. “That’s a, that is a big man, right there. What’re you, eight feet? Nine? What do they put in the water at that school?”

“Maybe I just took my vitamins,” Shane shoots back. “Shouldn’t’ve skipped ‘em yourself.”

Ryan laughs, and Shane laughs a little too, because in truth it is very evident that Ryan is fit as a fiddle and hasn’t missed his vitamins for even one single day. The stretch of his t-shirt around his biceps is proof enough.

“Well, see you around,” Ryan says, his eyes already sliding off of Shane and onto the next thing. Shane wants to say something funny to keep his attention, but nothing’s coming to mind. It’s infuriating; Shane prides himself on being quick-witted usually, but his mouth is cotton-dry and his brain is sluggish and still busy replaying Ryan’s laugh.

“Not if I see you first,” he says, very quietly, but Ryan’s already walking away.

“That was pretty lame, buddy,” Curly says, watching Ryan go as Shane does. “Not great.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mmm,” Curly hums, non-committal. A minute later he’s passed another G&T to Shane. “This one’s on the house, _pobrecito_.”

*

A few days later, Shane makes up his mind to wander down to the lake alone. It’s well after ten o’clock at night and the lodge is lit up bright behind him, gentle music and clinking glasses and the babble of polite conversation wafting out over the resort.

He’s had a couple of drinks and he’s feeling lonely and melancholy, already bored of playing bridge and euchre with his family. Tired of faking enthusiasm when someone asks him what’s next.

He’s got to head back for his swim trunks, so he makes his way up the winding outdoor staircase that leads from the lodge up to the cabins. He catches up to Sara, on her way up unbelievably slowly, clutching an enormous watermelon in each arm. She keeps having to stop to adjust her grip on the watermelons.

“What on earth are you doing?” Shane asks, watching her jump with surprise when he comes up behind her.

“Nothing,” she says, but there’s a guilty look on her face. Shane knows that look.

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Shane says. “It looks like you’re trying to carry two watermelons that weigh roughly the same as you up this hill to the cabins.”

“Well, then why’d you ask what I was doing?” she snaps, resting a watermelon on her knee to push sweaty hair out of her face. “If you knew already.”

Shane takes one of the watermelons from her.

“I suppose my real question is _why_ you’re carrying two watermelons up this hill to the cabins.”

Sara bites her lip and gives him a searching look. Finally she must decide he passes the test.

“Okay, fine. Help me carry these, will you? Only you can’t tell anybody. Not your brother and sister, and definitely not your parents. And, god forbid, not _my_ father.”

“I promise.”

He follows after her up the stairs, schlepping the heavier of the two watermelon. To his surprise, she turns not right, to the guest cabins, but left—to the staff cabins and outbuildings—and then pushes right through the front doors of the staff mess.

Shane’s never been in here before, not in all the years he’s been to Kellerman’s. The main room’s big and it’s stuffed full with a party in full swing, rock music coming in loud over the radio.

[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EoI-6lQFIE) _(Work, work) ah, work it out baby_  
(Work, work) well, I'm gonna drive you crazy  
(Work, work) ah, just a little bit of soul, now? 

He’s surrounded by dancing pairs, dancing like he’s never seen dancing before. Dancing close, _real_ close: legs slotted around waists, hips grinding into hips, necks thrown back. He’s startled, at first, by the overt sexuality of it all.

Then he notices that not all the pairs are men and women. That there are a few men dancing with other men, and a few women dancing with women. There’s a frankly beautiful black-haired man in the corner pressed close to a nondescript guy that Shane recognizes as a lifeguard at the pool, arms wrapped intimately him as they gyrate together.

Shane swallows hard enough that Sara looks over. In this room her prim dress, nipped in at the waist, looks like deliberate irony.

“Shane, you can’t tell a soul. They’d lose their jobs.”

He nods. He knows he is supposed to be very knowledgeable now, four years of college under his belt, four years away from home having hardened him into a man of the world, but he doesn’t feel that way. He feels overwhelmed, and shocked, and embarrassed to be shocked.

“These go back here,” Sara says, indicating some tables at the back of the room with a nod of her head. They pick their way through the crowd. Shane’s eyes feel too big for his face; there are so many things to look at, beautiful people making their bodies move in ways he didn’t know bodies could move. He’s never, _ever_ seen a man kissing another man before, and now he has, and his brain doesn’t know what to do with that information.

It seems to be settling for “replay it over and over again on loop,” though.

At the back of the room they run into Ryan and Kelsey. Or rather, Ryan and Kelsey are dancing, stealing the show with a languid, sexy dance, her leg wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck. Shane almost walks into them in his haste to set the watermelon down.

Ryan’s got on black trousers and a white button-down, unbuttoned almost to the navel, and the sight of all that sweaty skin stretched over all that muscle steals Shane’s breath right out of his throat. _Why even put buttons on the shirt if you’re not going to use them?_

“Can you imagine dancing like this on the main floor, home of the family foxtrot?” Sara asks. “Daddy would close the place down first.”

“Yeah, I reckon he would,” Shane says. His voice comes out all wrong, and Sara sneaks a sideways glance at him.

“That’s Ryan Bergara,” she says, too smart for her own good, or more specifically for Shane’s own good. “Daddy hired him a few summers back to lead the dance program here. You’d think he and Kelsey were a couple, the way they move.”

“Are they not?” Shane asks. “They look great together.” There’s no point in caring about Sara’s answer one way or the other, but he finds he cares quite a bit nonetheless.

“Not since the first summer they were here,” she says with a shrug.

Ryan lifts Kelsey above his head effortlessly, and she shimmies her skirt at her waist while the crowd cheers. The song ends and Ryan slides her down along his body, tousling at her hair, pressing a smile into her neck as he hugs her.

A new song starts, and before Shane can prepare himself Ryan’s dancing in their direction, smooth and purposeful as can be.

“What’s the daddy long legs yuppie doing here, Sara?” Ryan asks when he lands in front of them, shooting a suspicious look at Shane. “We said no guests. They tattle.”

“I carried a watermelon,” Shane says, and immediately regrets it. Surely nobody in the history of the world has ever said anything stupider than _I carried a watermelon_. He’s never felt so self-conscious, standing there like a total square in his glasses and his cardigan sweater and the chinos his mother pressed for him that morning.

“Shane’s an old friend,” Sara says, rolling her eyes, stepping on Shane’s toes with her tiny heel to shut him up. “He’s given me his word he won’t tell.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have anything to lose if he does,” Ryan points out. “Max isn’t about to fire _you_ , is he?”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Shane says. “Promise. It’s. It’s not a big deal.”

Ryan’s eyebrows go up. He takes Shane in, head to toe, and Shane doesn’t miss the smirk when he gets to the cardigan.

“Your eyes are saucers right now,” Ryan says after a moment, once Shane feels well and truly sized-up. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You _sure_ it’s not a big deal?”

“I’m sure,” Shane says. In his periphery, the nondescript brown-haired man dips his beautiful partner low, then pulls him back up to grind against his thigh, hands palming his ass. Shane swallows, licking his lips without meaning to, trying to pretend with all his might that he’s too modern and worldly to be shocked. “I don’t—it’s fine.”

Sara catches his eye and mouths, “You _carried_ a _watermelon_?”

“Oh,” Ryan says, and then, with recognition Shane doesn’t know if he cares for: “ _Oho_. It’s a little more than fine, isn’t it, baby?”

“Don’t call me—” Shane starts, but Ryan’s crooking a finger at him, backing up onto the dance floor and beckoning for Shane to follow, and Shane can’t finish the statement because he’s forgotten how to breathe.

Then Ryan grabs his hand, pulls him onto the floor with a sharp but not unkind tug, and Shane forgets his own _name_.

Ryan hoists him close without ceremony and brings his hands up to Shane’s shoulders.

“Jeez Louise, you’re an entire pine tree. Bend your knees, get low, okay? Like this.” He presses down firmly, re-centering Shane’s center of gravity, bringing Shane’s hips in low and loose.

Ryan slots his hips against Shane’s and starts to move in slow circles. Shane tries his best to mimic him, but he’s getting distracted by all the sights and sounds around him, embarrassed by the feeling of Ryan so close.

“No, watch my eyes,” Ryan instructs. “That’s where the rhythm is,” and Shane makes himself look Ryan in the eyes even though it sends shivers and alarm bells and _fear_ though him to do so. _You can’t do this, you’re in public, someone will see_ —

“I can’t—”

“You’ve never danced with a man before, have you, College Boy?” Ryan asks. “It’s okay, you don’t gotta be scared. Nobody here gives a shit. In here we dance with whoever we want to dance with.”

Shane is scared—he’s _so_ scared—but he also _wants_. It’s there with him all the time, singing through him every minute of his life, but it’s never come in as clear and bright as it’s doing right now. He lets Ryan tuck him in close and tries his very best to match Ryan’s rhythm and the excruciating swing of his waist.

He can feel himself getting hard against Ryan’s thigh, which is itself a new level of mortifying and terrifying, but Ryan doesn’t pull back and hit him. He only laughs low in Shane’s ear and pulls Shane tighter against him with a hand splayed at the small of his back.

“Good, that’s better. You’re not so hopeless after all,” Ryan says, and Shane feels _different_ all of a sudden. Lighter. The music is purer, there’s a beat in it he couldn’t quite detect before. Ryan’s hip is keeping time like a metronome against the bracket of Shane’s thighs, and Shane’s eyes fall closed.

Then the song ends and Ryan’s pulling away. When Shane opens his eyes again Ryan’s gone, off to grab another partner or find his friends.

Shane collects himself, breathing heavy. Just for a moment, for the briefest span of perhaps twenty perfect seconds, Shane was someone else and somewhere else. He was outside himself, outside his self-consciousness and his fear, and it felt so cathartic he could cry.

He finds Sara over by the table with the watermelons, where a big boozy punch bowl’s been set up.

“You okay?” she asks him.

“Yes,” Shane says. And then, immediately: “No.”

“You want to talk about it?” she asks. “Your heart’s beating out of your chest. If you’re going to have a heart attack we should probably go do it in private.

“I didn’t know, I didn’t know people just…” Shane starts, but he finds he can’t figure out how to say what he’s feeling, what’s got his head all muddled. “I didn’t you _could_.”

“People always find safe places to be themselves,” Sara says, leading him out of the mess with a warm hand at his wrist.

 *

They sneak out with a couple of beers and go down to the lake, where Shane was planning to go in the first place.

For a long time they drink in silence, looking out at the play of moonlight on the water, listening to the nighttime summer sounds.

“So am I bent, then?” Shane asks, to break the silence. “You saw that, it was pretty wild. If I—if I liked it, does that mean…?”

Sara shrugs. “Beats me. You’ve got to decide that for yourself, I think. What will you do if you are?”

Shane thinks about that, thinks about it seriously for the first time in his life. It’s not the first time he’s _wondered_ , but it’s the first time he’s been given the barest hint of an opportunity to follow through and felt like he could. Like he wanted to.

“Nothing, probably. I’d probably go ahead and marry a nice girl and have the kids and do the whole thing. I don’t, I’ve, with women, and it’s been good, so…?”

He trails off, too mortified to continue. He doesn’t know how to talk about this with a woman, even Sara, who he’s known forever and with whom he’s enjoyed a few inept, youthful fumbles in their long history. He doesn’t know how to talk about it with _anyone_.

Sara smiles as if remembering and presses a hand to the inside of his elbow, at his brachial pulse point where his pulse is running furiously.

“Is that fair to either of you, if it’s not what you want?”

Shane thinks about that. Then he imagines his father’s face, caving in on itself with disappointment and even disgust if he were to find out what Shane got up to tonight.

“It’s already been all planned out for me, Sar. I can’t disappoint them all. But I just have to—to find out for myself, first.”

“How will you find out?” Sara asks.

“I haven’t worked that out yet,” Shane says, chewing the inside of his cheek. That’s not quite true, but he doesn’t want to put Sara in the position of having to lie for him, if it should come up.

 _Time to grow up, baby_.

*

He finds Ryan the next day, at the dance studio where the dancers at the resort give private lessons. It’s a beautiful room full of natural light, and Shane lurks in a corner as Ryan finishes up a lesson with Mrs. Kornfeld.

“Hi Shane!” she chirrups on her way out. “Here for a lesson?” She laughs at her own joke. Ryan’s turned away from them, fiddling with the record player, but Shane sees all the muscles of his back go tense.

“Just wanting a word with Ryan here,” Shane says easily, like his heart isn’t thumping in his chest at the prospect. “I wanted to pick his brain about California. I’m dying to visit.”

She whips out the door trailing Chanel No. 5, saying something about a badminton tournament, and they’re alone.

“What do you want?” Ryan asks, turning around. Shane can see his hackles are up already. “If you’re here to yell at me, or—”

“Nothing like that,” Shane says quickly, eager to see Ryan relaxed and happy again, like he was the night before. “I wanted to ask you for a favor. Or, well, not a favor, I’d pay, I just need it to stay between us.”

Ryan’s eyebrows go up.

“Oh, I’m sorry if you misunderstood. I don’t do that. You seem sweet, big guy, but I’m not going to go to bed with you for all the tea in China.”

Shane can feel his face heating up with the misunderstanding.

“No, no, Jesus! No. I meant _dancing_. I wanted to sign up for lessons with you. You don’t do that with men, or…?”

“With guests,” Ryan corrects. “I don’t try it on with guests at the resort. I do dance with men, sometimes, as you’ve already discovered.”

“I know I can’t officially sign up for lessons with you,” Shane says, and Ryan rolls his eyes like it’s the most obvious statement of fact he’s ever heard. “But I was hoping maybe you would let me pay you under the table, and it could just be between us.”  

“Why me?” Ryan asks, finally, after a long moment of thinking. “I’m sure Kelsey would be happy to.”

“Last night I felt like I was floating,” Shane says, cutting him off. “It was like I wasn’t myself, and I loved it. I’ve never. I haven’t felt that way before. I didn’t know dancing could free you up like that.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t,” Ryan says, half under his breath. “But sure, fine. A rich white boy and his money are easily parted, and I’m happy to part you with yours for a few dance lessons. I have one other stipulation, though.”

“Name it.”

“In exchange for the covert arrangement, I want a favor.”

Shane waits him out. Ryan looks—embarrassed, possibly, for a second. Like he’s reluctant to spit out whatever it is he wants to ask of Shane. It’s a pleasure to see him less disaffected, because he has the sort of face that takes beautifully to expression. Every feeling gets blown up big and bold on his features.

“Okay,” Shane prods.

“I want you to help me sneak into the lodge and the administration building after closing. And the boathouse, when nobody’s around. Sara can get me keys, but if I’m found in any of those places alone after hours I’ll lose my job. I can’t go with Sara because they’ll think we’re messing around and then I’ll get killed _and_ lose my job. Which I think you’ll agree is worse.”

“Why would you want to do a thing like that? I’m not going to help you steal,” Shane warns. He feels like a cretin for assuming it, but he can’t figure out what else Ryan would want with the administration building in the middle of the night.

“I’m not a thief, thanks,” Ryan says, his face twisted in annoyance. “I make an okay living here, I don’t need to steal.”

“Well, then what?”

“I think Kellerman’s is haunted,” Ryan says, all in a rush, suddenly not seeming quite as cool to Shane’s eyes as he did last night. “And I want to get proof.”

Shane can’t help it; he’s caught so off-guard that he laughs out loud.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Seriously, what do you want to do in there?”

Ryan scowls, and Shane cottons on that he’s _serious_ about the ghost business.

“Ryan, ghosts aren’t…there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“If we asked your pops I bet he’d say there’s no such thing as fairies either,” Ryan says. “But I saw a few with my own two eyes last night. Just because you can’t always see something doesn’t make it not real.”

“I’m not a fairy,” Shane says, before he can stop himself.

“I didn’t say anything about _you_ , College Boy,” Ryan shoots back.

Shane realizes now that he’s been hurtling headfirst into a full-blown crush, and now he’s finding himself pulled up short. All of it, even the unavoidably life-altering part about Ryan being a man, he was dealing with. He was managing. But this— _ghosts?_ —he’s afraid might be too much.

Then again, the dancing. The floating, unbelievably lightness in his heart. The freedom.

“Okay,” Shane says. “Okay, it’s a deal. I’ll help you with the, with the ghost thing. If you teach me how to dance.”

“Deal,” Ryan says, looking satisfied. He reaches out to shake Shane’s hand and seal the arrangement. His hand is warm, smaller than Shane’s own but also steadier. “Come back tomorrow after lunch and we’ll start your lessons, but be warned, they’re going to be hard work.”

*

Dancing, Shane soon realizes, is exhausting. His enormous, long-limbed body just isn’t built to move that way. Ryan’s compact and so strong, built to make his body do what he wants it to do, and it responds to him with what looks like no effort at all.

Shane’s lucky if he can just get his limbs to go in the direction he wants them to go.

Ryan’s also got a short fuse; he gets impatient with Shane quickly, when it becomes evident that Shane’s as perplexed by his own body as Ryan is.

“Do you yell at Zach Kornfeld’s mother with that mouth?” Shane asks mildly one day a few lessons in, when Ryan’s just finished giving him a solid going-over for getting the steps wrong again.

“Mrs. Kornfeld knows how to hold her frame,” Ryan says, stern. “So does _your_ mother, actually.”

“That’s about enough from you about my mother,” Shane says, laughing when Ryan winks so fast it could almost be a twitch.

Ryan’s teaching Shane a routine he put together himself. Shane doesn’t know for sure, but it seems to be a combination of at least six or seven professional dances, with some popular dancing mixed in. It’s not like the really sexy dancing Shane got a taste of at the party, but you’d never see it in in the main lodge either.

“I’ve never done any of these dances before,” Shane protests, when he starts on the wrong beat and steps on Ryan’s foot again and Ryan leaps back in pain and annoyance. “And I’ve certainly never done the woman’s part.”  

“I’m leading,” Ryan says. “You don’t step on the one. It’s just one, two, three, four, and you move on the two.”

They start again. Shane steps on the one, right on Ryan’s foot. He curses and hops back.

“On the two,” Shane says sheepishly.

“No, your frame’s all wobbly,” Ryan says a few minutes later, pulling back. Sweat’s pouring off Shane like he’s run a marathon, but Ryan’s barely broken a sweat. What an asshole. “Your core’s a mess, you’ve got spaghetti arms.”

“I’ve got spaghetti everything,” Shane says, wiggling his limbs for emphasis. “It’s not my fault.”

Ryan pulls back, one arm still bent taut like it’s grasping the invisible hand of a partner, and gestures with the other at the empty space between them. “You’ve still got to learn to control them. This is my dance space.” He gestures at the space closer to Shane. “This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine. You gotta hold the frame.”

Shane is sure that what Ryan’s telling him is very important, in terms of dancing know-how, but he’s distracted by how Ryan’s arms are bulging out of his tight grey shirt. He’s feeling a little like he _wants_ to be in Ryan’s dance space, and the thought warms his whole face enough that he has to pretend to wipe it off with a towel so Ryan won’t see him blushing.

“I’m not feeling the joy, Ryan,” Shane says, half an hour later. His whole body aches, and they haven’t even done anything particularly complicated.

“This is work,” Ryan says. “I warned you it would be work first.”

“Are you happy when you dance?” Shane asks, curious.

“All the time,” Ryan says. “Well, not right now, but this barely even counts as dancing. Mostly it’s just getting stepped on, which thrills me less.”

At the end of the lesson, Shane feels more demoralized than before. Being this close to Ryan, so close but not close enough—that’s as taxing as the dancing.

Ryan goes over to the record player. “Okay, I just want to see if this loosens you up. Don’t fuss at me.” He puts on a record, and on the opening bassline Shane recognizes it for “Stand by Me,” that song that was on the radio so much a year or two back.

“You’re a big rhythm and blues man, aren’t you?” Shane asks when he realizes what it is.

“Nothing makes you want to move like rhythm and blues and soul. I love all the formal dances, but nothing gets me like this.” Ryan taps his fist over his heart once, and then he holds his hand out for Shane. “If you can’t dance to this, you can’t dance to anything.”  

There’s something to it. Shane’s already got a feeling in his hips, like a tickle in his throat except centered behind his pelvis, that says _move_.

Ryan tugs his shirt up and over his head. Shane wants to protest, but he finds he’s rendered incapable of words by the surprise of it. “It’s okay,” Ryan says, as if saying it’s okay will make it so. As if they wouldn’t get the snot beaten out of them, if someone found them here like this. “I need you to feel something. I think it will help.’

Shane takes Ryan’s hand and lets Ryan pull him in close. He wraps his arms around Ryan’s neck like a woman would; it’s strange, because he’s so much taller than Ryan, but it also doesn’t feel wrong and so he allows it.

[ _I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid_ _  
Just as long as you stand, stand by me_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwZNL7QVJjE)

Ryan’s got a firm hand on Shane’s hip and one on his back, guiding him in an exaggerated sway to the beat. And there it is—that breathless, weightless feeling again, more acute than joy. Shane closes his eyes and lets himself go with it.

“Found you,” Ryan says, so quiet, as if he’s afraid to disturb the uneasy truce their bodies have created. “You’re trying too hard. Don’t try so hard. It’s never about the steps, it’s about the feeling.”

Ryan drags one of Shane’s hands from around his own neck and places it over his heart. Shane can feel Ryan’s chest strong beneath his hand, and beneath that, the faintest _ka-kumph, ka-kumph_ of his heartbeat

The rhythm of the song comes together with the rhythm of Ryan’s heart under his hand, and Shane can feel his own body responding, clicking into place with Ryan’s until they’re moving like two pieces of the same machine.

“There,” Ryan says, triumphant. He lets Shane press against him, urgent with the need to catch the beat and pin it down. “There it is.”

For about two minutes, Shane loses himself. When the song stops and Ryan stops moving he comes back, but there’s a high that lingers. It’s exactly, Shane realizes, like making love, and the thought makes him flush and step back.

“So did you find the joy?” Ryan asks, smug. He must know the answer is yes from the dazed look on Shane’s face.

“Yes,” Shane breathes out.

“Eventually it’ll all feel like that,” Ryan promises.

*

They go for their first ghost hunt (and it makes Shane feel stupid just to think the words _ghost hunt_ ) on the twelfth of June, 1963.

He remembers forever that it’s that day, exactly that day, because it’s the day Medgar Evers is shot and killed in Mississippi.

There’s a pall over the whole resort that day, staff and guests both subdued and glued to the televisions. Shane’s parents stay in their cabin watching the news, his father tight-lipped, his mother fluttering nervously around straightening couch cushions she’s already straightened.

Sara slips Shane a spare key to the lodge at dinner, where he’s half-listening as his father and his father’s friends argue about politics like it’s a sport or a chess match instead of people's’ lives.

_(“Of course it’s the Klan, they’ve been gunning for him for months, why, just a few days ago—”_

_“Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address set them off, he’s forcing change the south isn’t ready for—“)_

When Maisie brings the drinks around her eyes are red-rimmed and wet. Her face is splotchy from crying but her tone’s deliberately cheerful, as if she feels she has to pretend she wasn’t. Shane can’t be there a minute longer, and he gets up abruptly from the table.

“I’m not feeling so hot,” he excuses himself, and he flees for the out-of-doors. He’s not supposed to meet Ryan until 11:30, so he whiles away the hours by the lake, and in the woods, and wandering the beach shoeless with the sand between his toes.

At 11:20 he sneaks back to the lodge, to the back door where they’ve agreed to meet because it’s out of sight of the cabins. It’s quiet now, all the lights out. Sara says they have exactly four hours until the early morning staff comes in to clean and get things ready for breakfast. He doesn’t know what Ryan has planned, but presumably he has at least some idea of how to catch a ghost.

Ryan materializes behind him at exactly 11:30 on the dot.

“You’re prompt,” Shane says, for lack of something better to say. He unlocks the door and they slide inside.

Shane sure doesn’t believe in ghosts, but it’s undeniably eerie to find this building he spends so much time in suddenly dead silent and empty.

“So what’s the story here?” Shane asks. “Who are you even looking for?”

Ryan shrugs. He’s being uncharacteristically quiet; Shane knows him well enough now to know that he’s usually got a lot to say, even it’s just repeating “You’re not holding your core taut!” and “Spaghetti arms!” over and over again in increasingly hysterical tones.

“The staff tell stories. I guess there was a woman here twenty or thirty years ago, not too long after the place got off the ground. She worked in the kitchens.”

He’s tight-lipped, strangely unwilling to offer anything more.

“That’s all you know? Did she die here?”

Ryan shifts, pulling two flashlights out of his jacket. He hands one to Shane.

“We don’t owe you our sob stories. I’m not about to tell you if you’re just gonna tell me it’s nonsense.”

“I don’t think the _story’s_ nonsense,” Shane says, taken aback by Ryan’s seriousness, by the _we_ and the _you_. “I just think the ghost part is.”

Ryan grimaces.

“The story goes that one of the guests got her in a bad way, and they called a hack doctor in here to take care of it, and she died.”

“That’s horrible,” Shane says. He doesn’t know quite what to say. He can tell there’s this hurdle here between them again, where he’s one of the guests and Ryan’s one of the staff and it’s put a barrier of difference that Ryan can’t see past.

Probably it’s not fair for Shane to ask him to see past it, today of all days.

“So how does one locate a ghost?” Shane asks. He’s not trying to be flip, he’s genuinely wondering.

“I just needed to get in here at night, with all the guests gone,” Ryan says. “I’ve got a tape recorder and some blank tapes, and I’m going to record while we just sit for a while. I read that sometimes you can hear things when you play them back that you can’t hear in the moment.”

“Where’d you read that, _Ghost Hunting Weekly_?” Shane asks. “Are there a lot of periodicals on finding ghouls that I don’t know about?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about, College Boy,” Ryan says. “Add it to the list.”

They end up sitting on the spotlessly clean floor of the expansive kitchen, the tape recorder running. Shane’s been here plenty of times over the years, mostly sneaking food with Sara and Zach and TJ and the others to fuel midnight skinny-dipping in the lake.

“You’re awful quiet,” Shane says eventually. It’s more boring than he expected, ghost-hunting.

“It was a bad day,” Ryan says.

“Yeah, I know. I had the same day you had, I expect.”

It’s too dark to tell, but he catches the glint of Ryan’s eyes, the shifting of his body near Shane’s. Ryan huffs a low, humorless laugh.

“No. You didn’t.”

“Everybody was a mess about Evers. Guests too.”

Ryan shakes his head.

“You don’t get it. It’s not personal for you the same, it’s just a sad story on the news. It doesn’t touch your life. It doesn’t make you _afraid_.”

“I—we’re not that different, Ryan. I know it looks like I’m on the other side of this, but…”

Ryan makes a small frustrated noise and draws himself up small. Shane knows his body well enough now to recognize the discomfort.

“Yeah, so you voted for Kennedy. Big fuckin’ whoop. Do you know what it feels like to be unwanted in your own home?”

Shane realizes then that he’s talking about the country they share, and not the resort. Though maybe that, too.

“I’m half-Japanese, half-Mexican, give or take,” Ryan goes on. He’s got a smile on his face, but it doesn’t go all the way to his eyes. “You think I feel _welcome_ just because Sukiyaki’s on the radio? People look at you and they see a nice, if offensively tall, white boy who needs a haircut. People look at me and they wonder if I’m supposed to be here, no matter where ‘here’ is.”

It’s undeniably true, and Shane knows it is, but it still rankles. He knows his life has been easy, relative to most. He listens to the news every day and he knows it. But he also thinks there’s something liberating about having no one expect anything from you, something Ryan only sees the burden in because he’s lived with it forever.

“It’s not all tiptoeing through the tulips,” Shane says. “There are expectations.”

“Do you have any idea how crazy it is that your family is spending the entire summer here? That all these families can just take three months out of their lives, bail on work, and go on vacation?” Ryan shakes his head. “That’s not normal. That’s not how people live.”

“My dad’s on the phone with the office checking in every day, and—”

“Man, come on. A three-month vacation?”

“My whole life is mapped out for me,” Shane says baldly. “In September there’s a job waiting for me at my father’s business. I’m going to work there forever, until I retire. I’m going to find someone to marry, and I’m going to have a family. And that’s—that’s it. You’re free as a bird.”

“Poor little rich boy,” Ryan says, but he’s laughing again, at least. “Handed a cushy office job, fighting off the girls with a stick. Good work, if you can get it.”

“Not if you don’t want the work,” Shane says, suddenly weary. “Not if you think the work will kill you.” He hasn’t voiced this out loud, not to anyone. Not to Scott or Cynthia, not even to Sara, although he’s sure she has intuited it anyway.

“What work do you want, then?” Ryan asks. His finger’s tracing little patterns on Shane’s ankle now, in a way that Shane is finding extremely distracting. At first he thinks Ryan’s tracing figure eights, and then he realizes Ryan’s writing his own name there, over and over.

“I don’t know,” Shane admits. “Something else.” Nobody’s ever asked him that before, as far as he can remember. _What do you want to do? What do you want to be?_ “I’m interested in film, I suppose. The mechanics of it. Cameras, and shooting movies. I studied a little film in college, in between business classes, but I’d like know more about it.”

“Hollywood’s the place for you, then,” Ryan says. “Can’t shake a stick in that town without hitting ten directors in need of a good camera operator.”

Shane’s quiet for a moment. The _want_ rises in him again, so strong it leaves an aftertaste in his mouth, sharp and sour.

“What’s stopping you?” Ryan asks.

“Only that I can’t bear to be a disappointment,” Shane says. “Only that it would kill my father. And that’s even without all the other business.”

He still can’t say it out loud, that thing he feels in his gut when Ryan pulls him close to dance, hands on hips.

“I don’t know,” Ryan says, thinking. “He seems like a decent guy to me. Good tipper, anyway, and in my experience they usually go together.”  

“He’s eminently decent,” Shane says. “He just has very clear ideas about what I should do with my life.”

“You think my pops yearned for his son to be a professional ballroom dancer?” Ryan asks with a snort. “I’m not a novice to being a disappointment. I’m just saying that some things are worth it.”

“Well, maybe the joke’s on both of us, depending on what Kennedy has to say about it,” Shane says. “I might weasel my way out of that desk job after all.”

The joke falls flat as the word hangs between them, unspoken: _Vietnam_. Maybe it’s pointless to make plans after all, or to agonize about breaking plans. Maybe life has plans for either or both of them that they don’t know yet. Shane can’t bring himself to worry about it, not yet, but he wonders.

They fall silent, then. Ryan’s listening intently, ear turned to the empty air, for anything left of the kitchen girl who Shane knows is long gone.

Shane marvels that in the very recent past—just two weeks ago, in fact—he’d thought Ryan to be untouchably cool. And he is cool, in his way, but he’s also deeply _not_ cool. The person he is when he’s moving on the dance floor is not the same person he is off it, sitting here on the floor of the kitchen, knees almost touching Shane’s own.

There’s a lot of fear there, and insecurity, like no one’s told him in a long time that he’s a good man, worth something. Shane could be the one to tell him, maybe.

“I think your ghost has left the building,” Shane says after a while. “If she was ever here, which frankly I doubt.”

Ryan frowns at his tape recorder. “I’ll listen to these later,” he says. “I don’t think she’s here now, either. Maybe your big head scared her away.”

“Your noggin would be big too, if it had more brains in it,” Shane says back, easy as can be, smiling when Ryan flips him the bird. He can’t believe how _easy_ it all is. He thought it would be harder.

*

Well, the dancing’s still not easy.

Four times a week Shane goes to the dance studio in the heat of the afternoon, when it’s too warm for Ryan’s real clients to want to do anything but lounge by the pool. He sneaks up the stairs like a thief in the night, praying nobody notices and asks what he’s doing there.

They’re adding in spins today, and it’s the hardest thing yet. There’s just too much of Shane’s body to spin tight and neat like it’s supposed to do. Ryan pushes him away and then reels him back in and Shane comes crashing ungracefully into him, or else he loses Ryan’s hand completely and goes racketing off into some corner of the room.

“ _Oof_ ,” he mutters the third time he spins into Ryan. “It’s like a brick wall, your chest. Is that really necessary?”

“Some of us take pride in our appearance,” Ryan says, eyebrow raised. “Instead of hiding behind glasses and a cloud of hair.”

‘I need them to _see_ , Ryan. They’re functional.”

“Silly me. That’s the fourth time you’ve spun right past your mark, so I just assumed you were blind even with the specs,” Ryan snaps. “You catch my hand _here_ , you brace yourself _here_. You’ve got to control it.”

He waves his hand up and down Shane’s body, as if to indicate that _it_ translates to _all of this_.

“You try having any balance at all when your center of gravity’s up to most people’s chins,” Shane says.

The fight abruptly falls off Ryan’s face. Shane knows that look; it means Ryan’s got an idea, a dancing-related idea that almost certainly means more pain and suffering for Shane in the very near future.

“Meet me at the car park in ten,” Ryan says. “We’re taking a field trip.”  

They take a short drive in Ryan’s beater 1957 Chevy Bel Air. Ryan knows the mountain roads well, and within twenty minutes or less they’ve arrived at a little abandoned campground next to a rushing river.

“You bring all your clients here?” Shane asks.

“Only the mouthy ones who give me bruises with their pointy elbows,” Ryan says, but his tone is mild. “You’re going to learn some balance if it kills us both, and it very well might.”

He’s looking out on the river, and Shane follows his eyes. There’s a big log stretched across the river, wide enough to stand on but not wide enough to be _comfortable_ standing on.

“Oh no,” Shane says, understanding.

“Oh yes,” Ryan says, jabbing him in the chest with a finger, his smile wolfish. “Walk the plank, baby.”

He makes Shane walk across the river over and over, toes clenched into the moss of the log for purchase, arms stretched out wide for balance. When he’s satisfied that Shane can do that without fear, without the constant wobbling precariousness, he joins Shane up on the log.

He holds out his arms in the beginning pose, for Shane to step into.

“Just the step sequence,” Ryan promises. “No spins.”

“No spins,” Shane warns, before fitting his hand into Ryan’s. He makes the mistake of looking down, into the churning water. The log’s not high and the water’s not deep, but it’s fast. It’s started to rain again, and Shane doesn’t feel the drops on his head and shoulders so much as he hears them pitter-pattering against the log like music.

“Don’t look down,” Ryan says, catching Shane’s chin with his hand and pulling it up. “Look here. Good. And _one_ —no, you move on two, Jesus, didn’t they teach you to count in Chicago—”

He starts to count off the beat and Shane advances, shaky, clutching at his shoulders. Ryan steps back easily, laughing. Then it’s Shane’s turn to go backwards, and Ryan’s hands grip his arms more firmly. Shane’s still nervous, but he feels surer on his feet now. Forced to balance or go tipping into the water, his body has opted to straighten itself and tighten at the core, using muscles he didn’t realize he had to hold him steady.

Ryan’s arms pull away and Shane wants to complain about it, but then Ryan’s dropping low into a surfer pose, dancing goofily like he’s one of the Beach Boys. Shane lets one leg come up to turn his ankle in a delicate circle, standing on one foot in a heron’s pose.

“There you go,” Ryan says, giving an undignified giggle when Shane’s arms windmill wildly. “Not so hard, is it?”  He moves into something like the Twist, holding his hand out for Shane again so Shane can twist with him.

“It’s pretty hard,” Shane grunts, but he’s more than a little transfixed by the way the raindrops bead down Ryan’s face and plaster his hair to his forehead.

“There’s a lift in the dance, you know,” Ryan says. “Only I don’t think I can manage to lift you over my head. Too much of you.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys,” Shane says without thinking. He’s gratified when Ryan laughs a big belly laugh.

“Yeah, I bring ‘em to my secret balancing log and I tell ‘em they’re too much for me to handle, and they go nuts for it,” Ryan agrees when he stops laughing. He looks Shane up and down, assessing. “I could maybe do it if we were chest-deep in the water. What do you think, wanna get hauled around?”

Shane does. He really, really does.

“Might as well,” he says, like it’s nothing to him.

Ryan smiles, not fooled.

“Thought you might,” he says. Then he bounces on the log once, twice, making the whole thing wobble around. Shane’s arms go flailing again, but there’s no saving it: he topples into the river.

When he resurfaces, spluttering, Ryan’s sitting on the log, laughing his fucking fool head off.

“Oh, _very_ good,” Shane says. He wades over, grabs Ryan by both ankles, and tugs. Ryan comes tumbling off the log, into his arms, and they both go crashing back into the water.

“I’ll never forgive you for this!” Ryan shrieks.

“In the river nobody can hear you scream but the fishes,” Shane says. “What’re you going to do, haunt me?”

“Maybe I will,” Ryan says, splashing at him.

The river’s too quick to try the lift here, so they hike their way to the reservoir a mile or so away, picking their way along in their soaked-through clothes. Shane falls back, lets Ryan take the lead, and takes the opportunity to ogle the musculature of his back through the sheer wetness of the white t-shirt he’s wearing.

Being lifted in the air is a whole new feeling for Shane. It takes a few tries to get it right; they get deep enough so Ryan’s up nearly to his chest, letting the water do the work he’d never manage alone.

“You’ve got to hold your body tight,” Ryan says. “Arms out, arch your back, keep your legs together like they’re glued at the knee and the ankle. Other than that, it’s just about trust.”

Shane’s seen Ryan lift Kelsey loads of times, and he doesn’t think that what’s being proposed here is possible even in the water. He hasn’t a hope of getting his body small like that, no matter how much he trusts Ryan.

“Of course I trust _you_ ,” Shane says, slicking his hair back. “It’s this big Sasquatch body I don’t trust. It’s always betraying me one way or the other.”

“Come on,” Ryan says, clutching at his waist with two firm hands. The only time Shane ever feels small is when Ryan’s hands are on him, leading.

Here goes nothing. Shane pushes off from the balls of his feet, feels Ryan’s fingers clench into his sides and then swoop him up and overhead in one smooth motion like he’s done it a million times. He supposes Ryan probably _has_.

Shane tries to remember everything Ryan said—arms out, legs locked, core tight, back arched. It’s an unnatural pose, and for a minute he thinks he has it—and then he’s toppling over, diving into the water at the last second so he doesn’t belly-flop.

“That was good,” Ryan says when he resurfaces, shaking water out of his eyes.

“It wasn’t good,” Shane says. “I fell.”

“No, it _was_. You weren’t gonna get it the first time. It felt good. What do you know? You don’t even know what good feels like yet.”

They try it again, and again, and again. Sometimes Shane crash-lands right away; sometimes he gets a few tantalizing seconds of air time, just enough to see what’s so great about it, before he counterbalances.

“One more try and we’ll go in,” Ryan promises. “Make sure to tell me what excuse you give your mother for why you look like a half-drowned cat.”

It’s feeling like a lost cause, but Shane gives it one more go. He leaps from the balls of his feet, keeps everything as tight as he can, and feels Ryan lift him up and up and up. And then: flying. It’s like flying, he’s just suspended in the air, legs higher than his chest, pointed up to the sky. Ryan’s arms are shaking beneath him, but they hold.

They hold for seconds that feel like minutes, and then Ryan lowers Shane down, close against his body all the way. It must be how dancers are trained, it must just be part of the lift, but the intimate press of their bodies in the water makes Shane gasp involuntarily.

Ryan does him the dignity of ignoring it, but he does crack a little smile. He pulls Shane closer for just a moment, into a full hug, and then he moves back.

“I told you that you could do it,” Ryan says. “Control and trust, works every time.”

Shane feels euphoric. He runs it over again and again in his mind: _you don’t even know what good feels like yet_.

*

They break into the boathouse in the middle of the night in late June. They’ve got to be careful; nobody’s supposed to swim after dark, but when Shane was a kid they did it all the time anyway.

It’s pitch dark, all the boats tied up tight for the night and bobbing eerily on the black lake. They have to walk carefully along the dock to make sure they don’t take a wrong step and tumble into the water. Shane stumbles a bit over his feet and Ryan reaches out whip-fast to grab him by the wrist, pulling him back.

“Two left feet,” he admonishes.

They sit on the dock under the cover of the boathouse, pants rolled to the knees and their feet dipped in the lake. The only sound is the lapping of the water when they kick around.

“What’s the story here, then?” Shane asks eventually. “What’s so spooky about the boathouse? Oh, are there, can _boats_ be haunted?”

“A little boy drowned here, the very first summer the place was open,” Ryan says. “The son of one of the guests. I found the newspaper clipping about it at the library last year. It’s why they have lifeguards now.”

“That’s sad and all, but people die in a lot of places, Ryan. That doesn’t mean they, you know, stick around.”

Ryan shakes his head, listening hard. “People talk about hearing a little kid laughing around here when there are no kids in sight. Splashing when there’s nobody there at all, that kind of thing.”

“You recording again?” Shane asks.

“Yeah, I’ve got my tape recorder,” Ryan says, pulling it out of his bag. “And also, if you’re willing,” and then he’s pulling other things out of the bag too: three candles, a matchbook, and—bizarrely—a Twinkie still in its wrapper.

“Wait, what’s happening now?” Shane asks, bemused. “I know all kids like Twinkies, but can ghosts eat if they’re not corporeal?”

“It’s an _offering_ ,” Ryan says, like it should have been obvious. “I’d like to try a, well. A séance, if you’ll help me. To reach out to the spirit of the kid, if he’s still here.”

“I’m not saying yes, because this is lunatic, but what does the séance entail?”

“You light three candles, you put forth an offering of food, you hold hands in a circle around the candles. Look, I only know a little about it, to be honest. You can’t just go up to a librarian and say, _excuse me, ma’am, I’d like your most comprehensive book about contacting the dead._ ”

“Not with that attitude,” Shane says. He’s already on board, was on board the minute Ryan said _hold hands_ , but he doesn’t want to seem too eager. “Alright, I’ll humor you. But if we don’t hear from a haunted boat inside ten minutes, I’m eating the Twinkie.”

He watches in judgment while Ryan lights the candles. They toss flickering light around the boathouse and off the water, making it look like there are shadows moving where there shouldn’t be. The overall effect, Shane has to admit, is a good one.

Ryan’s hands are shaking as he lights the third candle. Shane’s only ever known his hands to be rock-steady. It’s interesting, the contrast between the self-assured man Shane knows on the dance floor and the man he’s starting to get to know off of it. The things that caught his eye about Ryan at first aren’t the same things that keep him coming back.

“You’re afraid,” Shane observes.

“I’m not,” Ryan says, but his face tells a different story. His eyes are wide; Shane’s never seen them so big.

“It’s just the light playing tricks.”

“I _know_ ,” Ryan says. He sets the Twinkie in between the candles, and holds his hands out for Shane’s so their arms make a closed loop around all of it.

“What’re you so—it’s just an old boathouse,” Shane says. “Why do you do this if you’re so scared of it? It’s not like anybody’s making you. You went to a lot of trouble to do all this.”  

“Because it feels good, I guess. The fear, the adrenaline. It was that way when I first started dancing, you know. Everybody looking at you, your partner depending on you. It’s a rush.”

“And now?” Shane asks. Ryan’s hands are clammy in his own. He shifts so their fingers are interlaced, rather than cupped.

Ryan thinks for a long moment. His eyes are still big and glassy in the candlelight.

“I still love it, but I’m used to it,” he says. “I don’t get that rush the same. Things like this,” he nods around at the boats, bobbing eerily on the water, “the things we can’t know, the prospect of glimpsing something we’re not supposed to see? That gets me going.”

Shane doesn’t get it. He’d give up a great deal to be less afraid. It would never occur to him to go _looking_ for the fear, to seek it out and face it head on over and over again on purpose.

“So what do we do now?” Shane asks. “Do we just sit here?”

“I’m going to ask for him to speak with us,” Ryan says. He raises his head and looks around the boathouse again, directly his voice up and out. “I’m looking to talk to little Aaron Aronoff. Aaron, if you’re here—”

“His name is _Aaron Aronoff_?” Shane asks, disbelieving. “What kind of parent—”

“Shut up, Shane!” Ryan hisses. “Aaron, if you’re here, we’d love to hear from you. I’m sorry about how you died.”

“That’s probably a grim memory for him,” Shane points out. “You couldn’t start with something lighter? Ask him if he likes the Yankees or the Red Sox for the Series?”

Ryan shoots him a look across the candles. Shane can’t help but grin back. He doesn’t believe in any of this but it feels right anyway, to clench hands in this drafty boathouse and joke and tease.

“Ignore my tall friend,” Ryan says to the air. “He’s insensitive because college beat the magic out of his heart, and now he’s dead ins—what was _that_?”

His head snaps around. His hands tighten around Shane’s. Shane’s about to open his mouth to make fun of Ryan again, but then he hears it too.

A creak, from the dock outside.

Ryan’s frozen, staring at him, candlelight bouncing off the planes of his face and giving it strange angles and hollows. He looks petrified. Shane runs his thumbs along the sides of Ryan’s hands, trying to calm him. It’s intimate, sure, but he’s already here, hand-in-hand with him. Might as well do some good. Ryan looks up at the touch and catches Shane’s eye, and his cheeks are pink in the dim light.

Shane could lean in and kiss him right now, kiss the fear right off Ryan’s face. Only his own fear holds him back.

Another creak, louder.

Then the door bursts open, and there’s a woman’s tinkling laugh, a man shushing her. The figures stop abruptly in the doorway, just outlines in the dark that Shane can’t make out.

Not ghosts, then. Something scarier by far: people.

Shane pulls his hands back from Ryan’s, quick as a shot. Shane can save this still, he just has to think on his feet. He’s good at that. They weren’t doing anything _wrong_ , exactly, but he knows how it must look. The hands. The candlelight.

“Shane?” the woman asks, and he blinks into the darkness at her. She steps forward, and it’s his sister Cynthia, her husband Jeff in tow. “What in heaven’s name…?”

“Hey, Cyn.” Shane exhales with relief. It’s probably about the best they could hope for. “You’re out late.”

“I could say the same to you. Mom and Dad took the baby for the night. Thought we’d take a rowboat out in the moonlight.”

Shane’s about to say that’s a romantic notion, and then he remembers where they all are and he snaps his mouth shut. Ryan shifts across from him, uncomfortable. Shane can’t help but feel _caught_.

“You’re that dance instructor,” Jeff says to Ryan, no preamble or introduction. Shane’s always known Jeff to be a friendly guy—not good enough for his sister, although who is?—but there’s something cold in his voice now that Shane doesn’t care for or recognize.

“Yeah, this is Ryan. Ryan, my sister Cynthia, her husband Jeff,” Shane says, rattling off the introduction by rote.  

“What’re you doing out here so late?” Cynthia asks. She sounds uncharacteristically hesitant, and that’s when Shane knows she suspects them of something, even if she doesn’t know enough about it to be sure of what. “Is that a Twinkie?”

“It’s pretty stupid, really,” Shane says. He never thought he’d be in a situation where telling his sister he’s holding a séance to communicate with a dead kid is the _better_ option, but here he is. “We were having, well, a séance. Just for a laugh.”

“You’re right, that is stupid,” Jeff says. He’s hard to make out in the dark, but Shane thinks he’s still not smiling.

“No it’s not, it’s a gas,” Cynthia says, digging a playful elbow into her husband’s side. Managing him, steering him away from what’s got him on edge. “Trying to communicate with a possessed pontoon boat?”

Ryan leans back on his hands and laughs, like he’s easy-breezy. “That’s exactly what Shane said.” Shane can see him putting it on, can practically smell the fear on him, but he’s not sure Cynthia and Jeff will know well enough to tell the difference.

“Ryan here’s got an interest in the paranormal,” Shane says. “He talked me around to it with a really fascinating story about a little boy who died here a while back. I’d never seen a séance and thought I might give it a shot.”

“The staff tell stories,” Ryan says with a shrug, playing it off. “But I think this one’s nonsense. I should be getting back, I’ve got a full morning of lessons booked tomorrow. See you around, Shane. Nice to meet you, Cynthia, Jeff.”

It hurts Shane to watch Ryan disavow it all, because while Shane thinks it is nonsense he knows Ryan doesn’t. He can see Ryan filing down the weirder parts of himself, the parts Shane likes best, to make himself safer. He hates it.

“See you,” Shane says, watching Ryan pull himself up to standing. He hands Shane the Twinkie and blows out the candles, so they’re all standing in near-total darkness. Shane’s grateful for the cover, so Cynthia and Jeff won’t see his face up-close and _know_.

“He seems like a nice guy,” Cynthia offers after Ryan’s out the door, backpack over his shoulder.

“He is,” Shane agrees.

 Jeff just grunts.

*

It’s a whole two days before Shane hears about it.

He’s at breakfast across from his father, before a long day of golf he doesn’t want to be playing with people who bore him. Mark Madej has the newspaper up over his face, putting it down only to kiss his wife on the cheek when she heads off to play bocce ball with “the girls.”

Then his father does the unthinkable: he folds his newspaper up and sets it down on the table. He looks Shane in the face. Shane hasn’t seen his father’s eyeballs at the breakfast table in about a decade.

“Jeff mentioned he ran into you and that dance pro down at the boathouse the other night.”

Shane almost coughs up his hot coffee all over the place. He gathers himself as quickly as he can.

“Yep. We were, well. If you believe it, we were looking for a ghost.”

“I believe it,” his father says. “But is that really the best use of your time? Looking for ghosts with the help?”

“It’s _vacation_ ,” Shane says. He doesn’t fight with his father, not ever, but he can feel himself getting riled up already. “I graduate college and all of a sudden I can’t have friends?”

“Of course you can have friends.” His father exhales and scratches his chin, meticulously stubble-free like it’s been every morning since Shane can remember. Shane’s not sure if he’s imagining a subtle emphasis on the word _friends_. “I just want you to choose them carefully, is all.”

“I’ll choose who I like,” Shane says, not trying very hard to keep the irritation out of his voice. “I don’t see why chasing some lark with Ryan is any different than you blowing off steam on the golf course with your pals.”

It’s a damn lie, and Mark frowns like he knows it.

“I’m sure he’s a nice guy,” Mark says. “He’s here making an honest living, and I respect that. But I don’t want you to see him again, and I don’t want you mixing with the help here. All that’ll come of it is trouble for you and them. They’re here to work, not to entertain you off the clock.”  

Shane can’t believe what he’s hearing. His father’s always been strict, but he’s never been controlling, never tried to dictate who Shane could or couldn’t see. Then it occurs to Shane that this is probably the first time ever he’s pursued a friendship that wasn’t an easy sell. The first time he’s ever dipped a toe over some line.

He wonders what else Jeff might’ve told his father, in the strictest of confidence: _they were sat too close, they were holding hands._ _It wasn’t natural._

“I’m a grown man,” Shane says. He wants to sound firm, but there’s a small traitorous quaver in his voice anyway. It’s a delicate balancing act here; he’s respectful of his father always, and a little afraid of him, but he’s also not about to cave on something he’s realizing now is terribly important to him. The thought of never seeing Ryan again sends a panicky, lightning-hot zing up his back. “I’ll be friends with whomever suits me and it won’t matter how they make their living or what they look like. But I’ve heard you and I respect your opinion, so I’ll take it into account.”

Mark’s eyebrows go up, his lips purse. He won’t have been expecting the pushback. Even now part of Shane longs to walk it back, to melt into wax under his father’s disappointed gaze and reform himself into something more obliging.

But he won’t.

Something new sparks inside Shane: defiance. He never had a teenage rebellion, really. He got good grades, he played in the band, he dated nice girls and had them home by nine o’clock at night. He went to the college his father approved of, studied what his father approved of, took the job he was offered. Everything’s been by the book all his life. Shane’s sick to death of it, and sick of himself for getting swept along with the tide.  

“Please, Shane,” his father says, picking up his paper again. “Please don’t make your life harder than it needs to be.”

His face, when it disappears again behind the newspaper, doesn’t look angry. It looks sad.

*

Because Shane promised to do so, he does take his father’s words into account. He skips out on golf, but he skips his dance lesson with Ryan as well. Instead he goes down to the lake with his brand-new copy of _Cat’s Cradle_ read and to think, long and hard and solitary, about what he wants.

Maybe he’s better off burying his head in the sand and soldiering on, as he has been. He could still have that easy life. He could still take that office job, marry a nice girl, have a couple of kids, and be right back at Kellerman’s next summer. That’s the path of least resistance, and Shane already knows it suits his fundamentally easygoing nature.

Or— _or_. Or he could do something else. He could be like Ryan, barreling into places he thinks are haunted. Trying to reach out and touch things he’s afraid of, to understand them better and fix them in spite of the fear.

He sits on a pier by the lake for a long time, until it’s too dark to read and the sun is setting over the horizon, throwing purple and pink and blue all over the growing dusk. Shane pulls his feet out of the water, tugs his shoes and socks back on, and starts the walk up to the cabins.

At the top of the winding wooden staircase, Shane stops. It’s a literal turning point: he can turn right, in the direction of his family’s cabin, or he can turn left, to Ryan’s. It reminds him forcibly of his father’s favorite poem: _two paths diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both…_

But he can’t travel both, and he doesn’t really want to. What makes up his mind, in the end, isn’t the flickering beauty of Ryan’s face under the candlelight, or even the press of his leg between Shane’s when they dance. Although those are important considerations. No, it’s the bright gleaming openness of his smile, the way he laughed with his head back, hand clapped to his leg, when he pushed Shane in the river.

The idea of never having that smile aimed at him ever again is too terrible for Shane to bear.

Almost without being instructed to do so, his feet take him to the left, toward Ryan’s. Every step feels righter and righter.

*

Shane’s never been in Ryan’s cabin before. He’s never been in any of the staff cabins, in fact. He only knows it’s Ryan’s because Sara had pointed it out to him, very casual, a week or two earlier, as if she thought it might be a piece of information he’d someday want to know.

He knocks on the door, knowing full-well that it’s late. There’s a light on in there somewhere, but it’s not bright. Ryan could be out, he could be asleep, he could have no interest in seeing Shane after Shane skipped out on his lesson without so much as an apology.

Shane waits a few moments and knocks again. There’s a shuffling from inside the cabin, a bang, a loud curse. Then the door opens.

Ryan’s standing there in his doorway in nothing but a pair of sweats, his dark hair wet and dripping. He’s clutching his elbow and rubbing at it, like he knocked it on something.

“Sorry if I woke you,” Shane says, uncertain. He wasn’t expecting to be confronted with Ryan’s bare chest like this, out of nowhere, and it’s got him off-kilter already. He doesn’t know where to look. He feels uncomfortably gawky again, soft and awkward next to the chiseled smoothness of Ryan. His paperback dangles in one hand, and Shane tucks it hastily into his back pocket.

“You didn’t. I was just getting out of the shower,” Ryan says. “What do you want?”

“To see you,” Shane says.

“You weren’t at the studio today.”

Ryan doesn’t look annoyed, just annoyingly impassive. Shane’s not accustomed to having to work so hard to figure out what he’s thinking, as expressive and forthright as his face usually is.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Shane says, spreading his arms beseechingly wide. “My father told me under no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t see you again.”

“And yet here you are,” Ryan observes.

“Well.” Shane shrugs. “He’s not the boss of me, is he?”

“Not for another two months, anyway,” Ryan says. He stands aside and holds the door open, inviting Shane to step inside.

The cabin’s all one decent-sized room with a little kitchenette and a bathroom in the back, like a studio apartment. It’s not lavishly decorated like the guest cabins, but there’s a big, comfortable-looking bed, a little sitting area with a tv, and a table with two chairs. Shane’s not surprised to see that Ryan’s got a radio and a Magnavox both. The latter probably cost him months of salary.

“I guess it’s not a great room,” Ryan says, hands in his pockets, watching Shane look around. “You probably got a great room.”

“No, it’s a great room!” Shane says fervently, and he means it. It’s got Ryan written all over it: a little messy, a little sparsely-decorated, but comfortable. There are a few movie posters on the wall— _Dr. No_ , _The Birds_ , _West Side Story_. It even smells like Ryan, in a way that makes Shane want to sink into the bed and bury his face there to fall asleep. It’s not just great, it’s perfect.

Shane nods at the Hitchcock poster. “Any good? I didn’t get a chance to see it. Too busy with midterms.”

Ryan stops pulling scattered clothes off of furniture and tossing them into his hamper. When he sees Shane looking at the poster, he lights up. “It was so good, man! I love film, but horror’s my favorite.”

“I loved Strangers on a Train—”

“Rear Window—”

“Vertigo—”

“ _Psycho_!” Ryan caps it off with a flourish of his arms, miming that his head’s exploding. “So fucking great! I couldn’t shower for a week.” He goes to turn off the record player, another rhythm and blues album Shane doesn’t recognize, but Shane stops him with an arm outreached.

“Leave it on. I’m sorry for—I’m sorry for the way my brother-in-law treated you the other night. He was really rude. And I don’t know what he told my father, but my father said some things that—”

Ryan holds up a hand. “It’s fine. Seriously. No offense, Shane, but if I paid attention to what every old white guy thought of me I’d never get out of bed.”

“It’s not really about you. I mean, it is, but it’s more about me. They can tell I’m different this summer, since, and…”

“And they want better for you. Compared to what you could have, I’m nothing.”

Suddenly Shane feels like slugging him.

“You’re not nothing, you idiot. You’re everything. Don’t you know how much I wish I could be brave like you, and just do what I want, and damn the consequences? Don’t you know how much I wish I believed in anything as much as you believe in your stupid ghost stories?”

“Speaking of rude,” Ryan says, wry. “There’s a back-handed compliment if ever I heard one. But you’re brave enough. Standing here now, defying your father? That takes a lot of guts.”

Shane bulldozes past; he’s got a thing to say and he won’t be satisfied until he can say it at last. It comes out all in a rush, everything he’s been thinking all day and worrying about all month.

“No, that’s not—I’m scared of everything, Ryan. I’m scared of what I saw at that party last month, I’m scared of who I am. I’m scared every time we dance. And most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my _whole fucking life_ the way I feel when I’m with you.”

He trails off into silence. It’s more than he meant to say, maybe more than Ryan wants to hear, but it’s too late to take it back. Ryan’s just standing there by the record player, unmoving, watching him. The song changes, something slow and soulful.

Shane wants very much to turn tail and run out of the cabin and down the path and back to his own safe bed. He wants that, but not as much as he wants to stay. He came here for a purpose.

“Dance with me,” he says, when Ryan still doesn’t say a word.

“What, here?” Ryan asks, looking around the cabin. There’s room to dance, but not a lot. If Shane can’t touch him soon, he’s going to scream.

“No, in the haunted boathouse. Yes, of course here,” Shane affirms. He takes a step closer, and then another. Ryan doesn’t step back, but there’s a look on his face like he’s of at least two minds about it. It’s the face of a man with a keenly developed sense of self-preservation, warring with himself.

Shane winds his arms around Ryan’s neck. On the way up he lets his hands skim Ryan’s firm chest, the muscles of his shoulders and trapezius. It’s more than he’s ever dared, more than Ryan’s ever let him get away with in all their lessons.

He starts to sway, and Ryan’s hips find his and join as if it’s automatic for him.

[ _Nothing could be sadder than a glass of wine alone  
Loneliness, loneliness is such a waste of time, oh yeah_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmnvPnDZUI8)

Ryan dips him back, holds him steady as ever so Shane knows he’s in good hands. The only difference is that when Shane lets his head roll back, he feels Ryan’s lips on his clavicle, pressing a kiss there. And then Ryan’s open mouth is at the base of his neck, and then his Adam’s apple.

It is, Shane knows, his very last chance to back out and run scared. He just laughs a shaky laugh and lets Ryan pull him up again, flush against Ryan’s body.

“I don’t sleep with guests,” Ryan warns. He presses his crotch against Shane’s hip, letting Shane feel that he’s hard in his sweats, and Shane smiles around his nerves.

“Who said anything about sleeping?” Shane asks, wide-eyed and guileless, playing the ingenue. And then he realizes he’s not really playing; he _is_ the ingenue. That’s embarrassing.

Ryan shakes his head. His hands find their way under Shane’s shirt, untucking it from his pants, dragging his hands under the hem and along Shane’s bare back.

“You know that feeling where you can tell you’re making a mistake but you go ahead and make it anyway?” Ryan asks with a groan. His fingers clutch at Shane’s back, then come back along his sides and to the slight swell of his stomach.

“That’s my middle name. Shane ‘A Mistake’ Madej.”

Ryan frees a hand from under Shane’s shirt and pulls Shane down to him by the neck. Then their mouths meet. Shane doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it’s only a kiss, a first kiss, a _good_ first kiss. Ryan’s mouth is warm and self-assured against his own. The earth doesn’t move under Shane’s feet, no giant crack opens up to swallow him whole. It just feels warm and nice and right.

Ryan’s mouth opens under his, and Shane takes the hint. He lets his tongue swipe in, a cautious, investigation. His reward is that Ryan’s hands sneak into the back pockets of his pants and squeeze him close.

Shane pulls back. “Nothing much to grab back there, I’m afraid,” he says, a little apologetic. Ryan takes the opportunity to tug Shane’s shirt over his head and toss it on a chair, pressing their chests close to sway to the slow beat.

Shane knows what he wants, but he has no idea how to get there. With a girl he’d put the moves on slow, a hand on her knee at the movie, fingers at the side of her neck during a good-night kiss, and then in for a nightcap and some heavy petting on the couch. With Ryan, it’s different. He doesn’t know what’s right, what’s expected of him, where is okay to touch and where isn’t.

Ryan must sense his hesitation, because he pulls back. His face is all flushed, pupils dark.

“We can dance any old time,” he says, up on his toes to press a line of kisses to Shane’s jaw. “I want to take you to bed. Can I?”

“Yeah, I— _yes_ ,” Shane says, caught off-guard by the forwardness of the question. He’s not sure if this is how men usually are with each other or if this is just Ryan, too focused to play coy. “Only I’ve never, and I don’t know how.”

Ryan laughs. He’s taking steps forward, forcing Shane to step backwards in time, walking him back to the bed. “You’ve been with women, right?”

“Sure, a few, but…” Shane says. He doesn’t know how to explain how different this feels to that, how fraught. And then there are the mechanics; Shane isn’t even entirely clear about what two men do together, not really. He’s about to open his mouth to find a way to hint at it, but Ryan’s already shaking his head.

“So, it’s just like dancing,” Ryan says. The back of Shane’s legs hit the side of the bed and Ryan pushes him gently down and back, so he’s propped against the headboard. “It’s good to know the steps, but the feeling’s what matters.”

“But I’m bad at dancing,” Shane blurts out before he can help himself. Ryan snorts and makes an equivocating “fair enough” sort of face.

“Better all the time. You’re a quick study, once the music’s cracked you open for me.”

A shiver runs through Shane’s whole body at that. It makes him flush hot.

“Jesus. Okay, but—”

Ryan kneels astride him, kissing him quiet. He stays there, kissing Shane, pressing him into the bed and running hands up to wind in Shane’s hair until his nerves are background noise compared to the need. Eventually he groans and bucks up into Ryan, and that’s when Ryan pulls back, breathing heavy.

Ryan’s hand falls to the button of Shane’s chinos. The other’s braced on Shane’s stomach, rubbing a circle with his thumb. “Yes?”

Shane nods, frantic, and without further preamble Ryan pulls his pants and briefs off. They get about halfway down Shane’s legs and Ryan has to wriggle down the bed to finish the job.

“Your legs really are an abomination,” he scolds, dragging the legs of Shane’s pants over his feet.

“You like ‘em, though,” Shane says. Ryan dips to kiss his ankle and then—god—he’s making his way back up Shane’s body, the absurd length of him, peppering little bites to his knee and thigh and hip. He slides back up to get his face level with Shane’s and then, finally, Ryan licks his hand and reaches down to wrap it around Shane’s cock.

Shane hears himself make an entirely stupid noise, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh and a groan, when Ryan’s hand curls around him.

“Big mistake,” Ryan says wryly, considering the weight of Shane in his hand.

Shane’s twenty-two years old, and not so experienced, and it’s been a while. It doesn’t take long at all before Shane’s clutching at Ryan’s chest, at the arm not currently at work between his legs.

“Ryan, it’s not—I can’t last,” he says, low and a little shy, but Ryan only smiles up at him with a hint of pride. “Oh, don’t be smug, that’s intolerable,” Shane adds.

“Let me be pleased with myself. Want to show you a good time.” Ryan pulls his hand off and Shane makes a tiny unsatisfied noise in his throat. “Let me…can I use my mouth?”

“Do you ever do anything else?” Shane asks, bemused. Ryan rolls his eyes and makes a complicated gesture with his hand.

“No, I mean, can I give you head?”

It takes Shane a moment to understand. He knows that’s a thing some people do; people wilder than him, generally, and wilder than the women he’s been with. There was one girl, after a college party featuring way too many gin rickeys, but he barely remembers.

“Gosh,” Shane says. “Um. Knock yourself out, I suppose.”

“You don’t have to look so shocked about it,” Ryan says, and as he winds his way back down Shane’s body he mimics Shane’s surprised “ _gosh_ ” and giggles to himself.

“You’ve got an awful smart mouth, considering what you’re about to do with it.”

“What, put it all over your cock until you come? Well, _gee willikers_.”

“Ryan…”

“Get a load of Leave it to Beaver over here, too pure to get his dick su—”

“If you’re gonna do it, then stop winding me up and do it already,” Shane snaps, exasperated, getting a hand in Ryan’s hair and tugging. Ryan beams up at him, and that’s when Shane realizes the bickering’s relaxed his nerves even more than the kissing had.

“Feisty,” Ryan says.

Then he puts his mouth on Shane, swallows him down in one sudden motion, and Shane loses the ability to think much of anything at all. There’s only the heat of Ryan’s mouth around him, the suction, his tongue moving along the underside of Shane’s dick in distracting sweeps.

It’s amazing, how easy Shane is for him. It might be embarrassing, except Shane doesn’t have any room left inside himself to be embarrassed. He doesn’t have any room for anything else either: not fear, not shame, not guilt. It’s only pleasure, and a sort of fierce giddiness at his own daring.

And an intense affection, when Ryan hums happily around him. Shane had doubted that anyone could enjoy this, but Ryan clearly is; he’s grinding rhythmically into the bed as he sucks and licks, and whenever Shane makes an affirmative noise Ryan sends one right back.

“Ryan, I’m close,” he hisses after just a minute or two, delivering a sharp tap to Ryan’s shoulder for emphasis. Ryan just reaches up to grab Shane’s hand in his own, lacing their fingers together as he redoubles his efforts on Shane’s cock.

“’Kay,” he mumbles around Shane, taking as much as he can manage. Shane feels Ryan’s throat working around him and that’s that: he’s coming hard, grasping Ryan’s hand and trying his very best to not violate any unknown fellatio etiquette.

Ryan works Shane through the last of his orgasm, and then he pulls back to lick around the head and clean up. The sight of it makes Shane want to come all over again, and he laughs helplessly when his dick twitches with the effort of trying.

“I…oh,” Shane says stupidly when Ryan’s back at eye-level.

“You oh? Good oh or bad oh?” Ryan’s eyes are lit up; he already knows it’s a good _oh_ , the bastard, and he’s fishing for the compliment.

“Good, as you know perfectly well. Jiminy Christmas.”

Ryan plops himself down on the bed next to Shane, and Shane abruptly realizes that Ryan’s still wearing his sweats. Ryan’s still hard, he’s leaked a little wet patch on to the front of them—and _of course_ he’s still hard, Shane hasn’t done anything yet. His nerves come swimming back.

He wants to reciprocate, wants it badly, but he’s not sure how to get from the wanting to the _doing_. He supposes it’s the same way anybody does anything they’re afraid of: you just jump in.

Ryan opens his mouth, probably to say something nice and understanding like _you don’t have to_ , but Shane’s already made up his mind. He nips at Ryan’s neck to stop the words in their tracks and presses his right hand to Ryan’s crotch to cup him through his sweats.

Ryan groans loud into his ear.

Shane discovers quickly that it’s all very validating. Ryan’s responsive to his touch, almost desperately so, and noisy to boot. Shane spends a little time getting the lay of the land, carefully mapping the contours of Ryan’s body outside his sweats. Then he gets impatient and tugs the sweats down to Ryan’s knees, Ryan helpfully wriggling out of them.

He’s bare under the sweats, bare and hard and flushed. Shane must have a funny look on his face, because Ryan laughs at him outright.

“You’re overthinking this,” he tells Shane, leaning in to bite at the tip of his nose. “Don’t act like you’ve never seen one before, you’ve _got_ one.”

“Be kind,” Shane says. “Two months ago this would have been unthinkable for me. We haven’t all got everything figured out at the tender age of twenty.”

He runs his hand along Ryan’s stomach, taut from all the dancing and suddenly tense from the skim of Shane’s fingertips. He lets his hand splay down, down, down, until he’s got Ryan’s cock under his hand. Ryan’s right, really; it’s not so different.

The different part is the _rest_ of Ryan quaking to life under him. He lets out a heavy sigh when Shane touches him for the first time, relief and desire and adrenaline pushing out of him. He shifts under the press of Shane’s arm and shoulder, pulls Shane further on top of him.

“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” Shane mumbles.

“There’s no wrong,” Ryan says. “As long as you don’t, y’know, pull it off.”

“Right. Step one, touch the cock. Step two, don’t pull it off. Step three…”

He’s distracted from his joke when Ryan groans a garbled curse around his own knuckles. It reminds him of the noises Ryan made earlier, his mouth stretched around Shane and full of him, and it makes Shane ask.

“You seemed to like that,” Shane says, curious, forgetting to connect his mouth to his brain.

“Yeah, Shane, I did like the way you touched me with your _enormous hand_ , what the _fuck_ —”

“No, obviously. I meant when you…what you did earlier. You liked that?”  

Ryan looks up at him, eyes hazy from pleasure. When the questions clicks for him, he smiles.

“Sure.”

“Why? It just seems—it seems like a lot.”

Ryan closes his eyes for a long moment. Shane remembers he’s meant to be doing something here and he speeds up a fraction. Ryan’s slick from his own excitement, so Shane’s hand glides easy. Ryan’s breath hitches.

“It being a lot is the, is the thing. Everything’s real urgent. Your sounds, and your smell, and your taste. It’s all…good.”

He’s breathing heavier, and as Shane adjusts his grip he realizes that thinking about it and talking about it is doing something for Ryan even now.

“Yeah? Isn’t it hard to breathe?”

Ryan shakes his head. His eyes are still closed, and Shane wonders if he’s remembering or imagining.

“Not too bad. It’s—that’s part of it too, it’s that adrenaline again. It feels good, like getting lost in a person.” His eyes snap open and focus, with effort, on Shane. “Like getting lost in _you_.”

Shane’s hard again already. He thinks maybe he’ll just always be hard now, seeing Ryan like this behind his eyelids every time he closes his eyes, watching Ryan talk himself off to the memory of him.

“And the taste isn’t bad?”

Ryan nuzzles up, into Shane’s neck. His hips snap up rhythmically into Shane’s hand.

“Kiss me and find out.”

Shane can only hear the blood roaring in his own ears and the little gasping noises Ryan’s making in time with Shane’s strokes. He bends down to kiss Ryan, because once Ryan’s put the idea into his head he knows he’ll never stop thinking about it otherwise.

Ryan smiles against his mouth and then opens it obligingly so Shane can lick in for a taste. He just tastes mostly like Ryan, minty and warm on its way to familiar, but there’s a hint of something salty and different there too.

“Ah, _ah_ ,” Ryan says, right into his mouth. He thrusts up, into Shane’s hand, and his hands go tense on either side of Shane’s neck. “Shit, that’s— _baby_ —” and then he comes all over his own stomach and Shane’s hand. Shane strokes him through it, because that seems the polite thing to do, and he stops when Ryan hisses and pulls his hips back.

Shane thought he might be a little disgusted, but he isn’t. He’s _satisfied_. Deep, down-to-his bones satisfied. He knows they need to clean up, that he needs to head back to his own cabin before his absence is noted, but he wants to collapse back into the bed next to Ryan and fall asleep just like this.

Shane’s finally found a situation where someone calling him “baby” doesn’t bother him at all. The opposite of bothers him, in fact.

“Well,” Shane says after a minute. “That was. That was pretty nice.”

Ryan snorts again, into his elbow.

“ _Pretty nice_ ,” he echoes. “You sweet-talker, you.”  

“I’m sorry, I’m just processing. It was. I’m.” He falls silent, not sure how to put into words for Ryan what this means to him. How truly unthinkable it would have been for him in May, to be here in Ryan’s bed like this. How he barely felt safe _looking_ then, let alone touching. “This wasn’t something I thought I could ever have.”

Ryan turns on his side to look at him.

“Man, you can have whatever you want,” Ryan says. “You just have to grab it.”

“Oh, I’ll grab it, all right,” Shane says with a wink, and his insides glow warm when Ryan shoves the pillow in his face and mimes smothering him.

*

July passes in a blur of dancing, and ghost-hunting, and sneaking around. Two of those things are quickly turning into Shane’s _favorite_ things, and the third he can put up with if it allows him to do more of the other two.

Shane finally almost-masters a pass of quickstep, a fast-moving segment of the dance that requires dancing so quick it’s almost at a run, with a series of complicated turns that took him a month to get right consistently. The day he does it five times in a row, Ryan dunks his head under a faucet and then comes up gasping “Oh thank god,” like he thought it was never going to happen.

Shane starts making a list of all the places at Kellerman’s it’s safe to meet Ryan for some smooching, or a quick grope if they’re lucky. It’s a short list—Ryan’s cabin, after ten pm; the dance studio, in the heat of the day when they hold their lessons. The lake at night, sometimes, if nobody else is there to use it for the same purpose. The woods, probably, but Ryan outright refuses thanks to the likely presence of bears.

(“They’re the _number one apex predators_ , Shane!”)

He expects to feel more guilt than he does, sneaking out at night to go see Ryan, defying his father. Sometimes on the way over to Ryan’s cabin he feels a little bit of that, but it all fades away when Ryan backs him up against the wall or the table or the counter of his little kitchenette.

The last week of July, they sneak into the administration building in the middle of the night. It’s the last one on Ryan’s wish list, and they’ve been putting it off for ages because it’s also the trickiest. For starters, it’s where the petty cash box is kept, and where the guests can store valuables in the safe if they want. The other issue is that it’s where Sara and her parents live during the season, in a big apartment that takes up the whole second floor of the building, so the odds of getting caught are higher.

Shane’s still spooked from the boathouse. He’s not afraid of ghosts, but he is afraid of causing that look on his father’s face again—disappointed, regretful, embarrassed.

When Sara slipped them the key a few days ago, she’d warned them that her father was often up until midnight or one in the morning getting ready for the next day. They watch from outside, until the light in Max Rubin’s first floor office goes off at ten. Then they wait for two long hours, sitting on dew-damp grass in the shadow of the building where they can’t be seen, Ryan’s feet in Shane’s lap, until it’s safe.

Tonight, Shane tells himself, he’s going to ask. The summer’s running out fast; in a month he’ll be going home to a desk, and Ryan will be going…somewhere.

When they think they can risk it, they unlock the back door of the administration building and tiptoe into the little sitting room. The building’s mostly just offices for resort management, and they give the steps up to the Rubin’s’ apartment a wide berth.

They settle on a couch there, and Ryan turns his recorder on.

“What’s the story here?” Shane asks. He keeps his voice low, nearly a whisper.

“Well, actually.” Ryan looks a little embarrassed, which is interesting. “I haven’t heard any stories about this place. Only something weird happened to me here once and I was never able to shake it. I was brushing my teeth upstairs in the apartment—”

“What were you doing _upstairs_?” Shane interrupts, curious. He’s been up there once or twice to see Sara, in the middle of the day when her parents were otherwise occupied. He wonders if that’s the same reason Ryan was up there, and the thought doesn’t bother him so much as it intrigues him.

Ryan shoots him a look. “I bet you’d like that, you pervert. No, I stayed in the Rubin’s’ guest room for a few weeks the first summer I worked here, waiting for a cabin to open up. Real nice of Max to let me.”

“Go on,” Shane says, wondering where this is headed.

“So I was brushing my teeth, right? I kept my toothpaste in a little baggie and brought it with me to the bathroom. One day I was brushing my teeth and the baggie flew right off the sink.”

“You think this building is haunted because one time you were brushing your teeth and you knocked over your toothpaste?”

“No,” Ryan scowls, but it’s at least a little put on. “It flew up, before it went down. Not like it just fell off, like somebody tossed it up in the air and _then_ it fell. It wasn’t natural.”

“That most mysterious of forces at work,” Shane says. “Gravity.”

Ryan punches him lightly on the arm. “Up and _then_ down, asshole. I know what I saw. Ever since that day I’ve wondered about this place. Before I could take or leave ghosts, you know, but after that…”

He trails off. As far as origin stories goes, it’s about the most ludicrous one Shane can imagine, but Ryan looks undeniably nervous sitting next to him in the dark. His legs are all pretzeled up on the couch, tucked up tight under him.

“Okay, so, let’s say there’s a ghost here,” Shane says, taking it to its logical conclusion. “Why are you afraid of it? What’s it going to do, chuck pomade at your head? Nothing scary about a ghost who just feels really strongly about personal care products.”

Ryan shrugs, helpless. “It’s not about logic for me. It’s just an energy I pick up, something that makes all the hair on the back of my arms stand up. I’m sorry you can’t feel it too.”

“Come on, then, ghost!” Shane hisses into the dark, faux-confrontational. “Throw a bottle of shampoo at my ass or something. Give me the old one-two with some bars of soap. Cut my spine out with a safety razor!”

“Jesus!” Ryan says, but he dissolves into giggles.

They’re quiet for a moment. Shane lets himself reach out for Ryan in the dark and rest his hands on Ryan’s kneecaps, surprisingly bony under his slacks.

“Earlier in the summer Max mentioned you’d be headed out, after the season ends.”

Shane tries to say it very casually, like he hasn’t been thinking about asking about it for weeks. He doesn’t think he’s entirely successful.

Ryan leans back against the couch. “Oh. Yeah, I think I’ve just about worn out my welcome in the northeast. It’s too cold here, I freeze after about October and then I spend the whole winter shivering and complaining. It’s no good for anyone.”

 _It might be good for me_ , Shane thinks. He imagines Ryan all bundled up in a big warm coat and a scarf and a hat, snow falling around them both. Thanksgivings and Christmases and New Years. That could be _really_ good.

“What will you do?” Shane asks instead.

Ryan shrugs again. “Head back to California, I think. I’ve got this…it’s stupid.”

“No, what?”

“I sort of want to do, well, this.” Ryan gestures around at the dark room.

“Sit in the dark and talk to air when you could be taking advantage of a very willing, nubile partner?”

“I don’t know about _nubile_ ,” Ryan says doubtfully.  

“I am, I’m blossoming before your very eyes and you’re ignoring it to chase ghosts while your boss sleeps upstairs.”

Ryan laughs, quiet and low, and it makes Shane’s stomach go all fizzy. “No, I want to go to Hollywood and pitch a travel show about—about haunted places. I couldn’t star in it, obviously,” he doesn’t bother to point out why it’s obvious, and Shane doesn’t need him to, “but I could write. Production coordinator, maybe. I think a lot of people are interested in this stuff.”

“This stuff being…ghosts,” Shane says. He doesn’t want to sound dismissive, especially because what he actually is, is _jealous_. He can see Ryan in Hollywood, working his way up from the bottom, pitching his show and shooting a pilot and doing everything he wants to do in spite of the hurdles.

“Yes, ghosts, Shane,” Ryan says with a roll of his eyes. “I think there’s a market for it, and I—it interests me. If not that, a horror movie, maybe.”

Shane doesn’t say anything. He picks at a stray thread on the couch cushion.

“Come with me,” Ryan says, sudden and fierce. For a minute Shane thinks he’s heard him wrong, and he tenses his jaw to make his ears pop.

“Pardon?”

“When the summer’s over, come with me to California. You’re interested in film, I’m interested in pitching a show. We could…I’ll need a camera guy.”

“I’ve got a job, Ryan. I’m starting at the business in September, you know.”

“Yeah, in an office,” Ryan says, waving it away. “At a _desk_ , like a chump. You don’t want to do it, man. What if instead we hop in my car, or your car, and just drive until we hit ocean, and figure it out as we go?”

The want rises in Shane again, palpable as nausea. He feels seasick, like his world is pitching on the waves around him and he can’t find a firm point on the horizon to look at and get his bearings. He wants it so much. He wants, so much, for Ryan to have never asked, so Shane doesn’t have to turn it down.

“Come on, Ryan. You know I. You know I can’t.”

“I know you _won’t_ , but that’s not the same as can’t. We could make a real go of it, you know.”  

The idea of _making a real go of it_ with Ryan, and all that entails, is mind-boggling. They’ve been pretty hot and heavy the last month, but Shane didn’t realize they were at “run away with me to California” levels of mutual head-over-heels stupidity.

“I made a commitment. I just can’t,” Shane says.

“Your call,” Ryan says with a shrug. “The offer stands.”

Shane’s been so caught up in the conversation that he doesn’t hear the squeak of the stairs until it’s almost too late. He does hear it, though, and he springs up from the couch, dragging Ryan up with him. They make a couple of tentative, silent steps toward the door, Ryan shoving the recorder into his bag, but they don’t make it more than halfway there.

The light flicks on, and Max Rubin’s standing silhouetted in the doorway to the hall at the base of the stairs.

“What on earth—Bergara, what do you think you’re—skulking around in the middle of the night, breaking in—!”  he splutters, more a series of indignant noises than a complete thought. Shane gets the gist well enough, though. Ryan’s got his mouth open to say something, but Shane lays a warning hand on his arm for the briefest of seconds and Ryan snaps it shut again.

“I’m afraid it’s my fault, Mr. Rubin,” Shane says, hoping his voice doesn’t shake. This is what Ryan wanted him along for in the first place, after all: for cover. He can go places Ryan can’t, and get away with it. It’s time to put that privilege to work and save their skins.

“Is that Shane Madej?” Max asks, squinting into the room. He’s not got his glasses on.

“Guilty as charged,” Shane says, striving for penitent. He arranges his features to look as guileless as possible. “Some friends and I wanted a late-night game of racquetball, but the court’s all locked up. I ran into Bergara here and I’m afraid I rather strong-armed him into sneaking in for the key to unlock it.”

Max Rubin frowns, like he can tell the excuse isn’t quite up to par but he’s too tired and confused to sort it out. Shane crosses his fingers behind his back in fervent prayer that the crisp press of his chinos is enough.

“I shouldn’t have gone along with it, but you do always say guest satisfaction comes first,” Ryan adds. Shane supposes he just can’t help himself. He can feel Ryan practically vibrating with nervous energy next to him.

“I…that’s true,” Rubin admits. “But how on earth did you get in here in the first place?”

“Oh no. That’s my fault, I think,” comes a voice from behind him. It’s Sara, most of the way down the stairs, making frantic eyes at Shane and Ryan over her father’s head. She’s got a pink robe clutched around herself, her already-curly hair caught up in pins.

“Sara!” her father exclaims. “Get back upstairs, this is none of your…you’re not decent!”

She’s already waving him off. Shane thinks privately that if Mr. Rubin knew how much less decent than this Shane’s seen her, he’d be long dead already.

“I gave Nancy a spare key, to look in on things when we went to Martha’s Vineyard last year—you remember Nancy, she was that tennis pro—and I guess the key’s been floating around the staff ever since. Whoops!”

It’s working; Mr. Rubin’s even more distracted now, no longer sure who he needs to yell at, if anyone.

“You two, out,” he barks, pointing at Shane and Ryan. “Bergara, get the key on the way out and unlock the damn racquetball court. Shane, make sure to lock it back up when your friends are done, and give me the key back tomorrow. Sara—”

Shane knows when not to push his luck, and it’s exactly now. They make a beeline for the door, Ryan slipping the right key off the ring on his way out. As they flee into the night they can hear Sara, her voice rising an octave as she pulls out all the stops. “But Daddy, I needed someone to water my _orchid_!”

“Atta girl,” Shane says, pausing once they’re concealed by the dark of the trees to catch his breath. “What a star.”

“I needed someone to water my orchid,” Ryan says, shaking his head. “That’s good. That’s almost as good as ‘I carried a watermelon.’”

Shane flushes. “I _did_ carry a watermelon.”

“You carried the shit out of it,” Ryan agrees. His eyes are still wide with the adrenaline. “I was there, big guy, I saw it. I’ll never forget it. That man’s head is the size of the watermelon he’s carrying, I said to myself.”

“Sorry we didn’t catch any ghouls,” Shane says. “Again. You know, I’m starting to suspect—”

“Don’t say it!”

“I’m starting to suspect there’s nothing to catch, because—”

“ _Don’t_!”

“Because ghosts aren’t—”

Ryan doesn’t let him finish the thought. He backs Shane up against the nearest tree trunk and shuts him up with his mouth hot on Shane’s and a thigh pressed between Shane’s legs. Shane can feel the bark of the tree scratching at his lower back where his shirt’s riding up, but he doesn’t care.

In two seconds flat, Ryan’s hand is at his fly, unbuttoning and unzipping and slipping in Shane’s briefs, smiling when he finds Shane already hard and ready for him.  

“But the bears will see…” Shane protests weakly. Ryan ignores him, moving his hand hard and fast.

“Guest satisfaction comes first,” Ryan says with a snicker, pressing his other hand against Shane’s belly, pushing his back into the tree. “I’m not gonna ask again, but promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

“Think about what?” Shane asks. He’s struggling to keep up his end of the conversation, such as it is. In his defense, Ryan’s hand on him is ruthless in its efficiency.

“California,” Ryan mumbles, going up on tiptoes to kiss his neck.

Shane doesn’t have to lie to make that promise. He already knows he’s going to think about it for the rest of the summer, and when Ryan leaves without him in his beat-up Chevy and doesn’t look back, and every day for the rest of his life after that.

*

August is scorching hot. Shane sweats through most of it, watching days fall off the calendar too fast, watching his time run out.

Ryan must be able to tell.

“Let me take you out,” he says to Shane one day after a particularly grueling lesson. Shane’s lying on the floor of the studio, breathless, more sweat than person.

“What, like a mafioso making a hit? Please, at this point you’re more than welcome to if it will end my suffering right now.”

“No, like, out on the town. Into the city. Tomorrow’s my day off.”

The city, Shane assumes, is New York City; they’re about two hours away from Manhattan. Less if Ryan’s the one driving.

“Where could we possibly go?”

Ryan just smiles enigmatically.

“I know a place.”

The next day, about two in the afternoon, Shane slips out of another round of golf partway through, claiming a headache.

“I’m going to be at the Kornfelds’ place tonight late,” he tells his father, “Zach’s hosting charades. No need to wait up.”

His father just nods, preoccupied, up next to drive for the green. Shane slips away, and he doesn’t feel guilty about it for a second.  

*

An hour later he’s sitting in the passenger seat of the Chevy, breezing down a mountain road on the way to the interstate.

“Tell me what you’re planning,” he says, but Ryan shakes his head and shoots a grin at him from behind the wheel.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried about it, you’ve just got that look on your face, and—”

“Don’t _worry_ about it.”

They fight over the radio for a while, Ryan batting away Shane’s hand every time he tries to switch over to the news for a minute.

“Not today,” he says, stern, grabbing Shane’s hand in his own and pressing it down against the leather of the seat. “No thinking today. All that shit will still be there tomorrow. If the news is bad, it’ll ruin it.”

Shane settles back against his seat and listens to Peter, Paul, and Mary warble about how many roads a man must walk down before you can call him a man. Ryan rolls the top down, and Shane closes his eyes for just a minute, the wind in his face and Ryan’s palm warm against his.

He doesn’t mean to sleep the whole drive away, but when next he opens his eyes it’s over two hours later and Ryan’s easing the car off the interstate and onto the turnpike, the skyline of New York City looming large in front of them. He could kick himself for it, with their time as short as it is now. He can’t afford to sleep through it.

They pull into a parking lot, and Shane’s not sure what he was expecting, but: it’s a cinema.

“Really?” he asks. His voice comes out as a sleepy croak and he coughs to clear it. “We came all this way to see a movie?”

“Yes, really,” Ryan says. “Good morning, by the way. You were great company. I’d say something and then you’d snore a reply in my general direction.”

“I don’t snore,” Shane says, knowing full-well he sometimes snores. He catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror and tries to push his hair flatter, but it’s hopeless. “I don’t know when I last saw a movie. I guess it was over Christmas. To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“So how did it die, then?” Ryan asks. “The mockingbird.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t read—”

“Of course I’ve _read it_ ,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes.  “Christ. You and your assumptions.”

“You don’t strike me as a reading kinda guy,” Shane teases, just for the pleasure of seeing Ryan bristle and go indignant around the mouth.

“I read!” Ryan says, turning off the engine. “Come on, the movie’s at five. It’s the [brand-new Steve McQueen joint](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057115/). Should be good.”

After a squabble in the cinema about whether they’re going to buy the largest-size popcorn or _two_ of the largest-size popcorns they find their seats.

“What’s this about, anyway?” Shane asks.

“Allied soldiers in a German POW camp,” Ryan says. “I assume they escape, judging by the title. Greatly.”

“Sounds like a real upper,” Shane says, grabbing a handful of popcorn and shuffling into the row after Ryan. The theater’s already over half-full; the movie just opened a day or two before and it’s a Friday evening, so he expects it’ll be packed.

It’s too bad. There’s nothing like the energy of a full theater, but part of Shane wishes they could have watched it alone in a dark room. Wishes his hand could find Ryan’s in the near-dark. That’s not an option now.

The movie starts, and Shane’s captivated by the action onscreen and Ryan’s full-throated enthusiasm beside him. Ryan watches movies like he dances; every part of his body’s engaged, tense when it should be tense, relaxed when it should be soft. Shane could almost be satisfied just watching _Ryan_ watch the movie, that’s how into it he gets.

When the Nazis give chase to Steve McQueen on his motorcycle, Ryan’s hands grip the armrests so hard Shane can see his knuckles going white even in the dim light from the screen.  McQueen jumps the first fence and Ryan cheers. He tumbles into the barbed wire of the second and Ryan groans into his hand. Shane has to clench his own hand around his knee to stop himself from reaching out to lay a reassuring palm on Ryan’s arm.

It would be like this forever, he knows. They could go places in public together, but they could never _be_ together in public. Shane would forever be reminding himself not to touch, not to stand too close, not to smile too big. They would always be hiding in plain sight.

 _You’re making the right choice_ , Shane tells himself. _You could never live like that._

*

“That was the _greatest_ escape,” Shane says when they come out of the theater, throwing his arms out wide to encapsulate how good the movie was.

“Not that great,” Ryan says doubtfully. “I mean, the movie was amazing, but only the three of them actually escaped. I don’t love those odds. Surely as escapes go it was merely okay.”

“’The Merely Okay Escape.’ Catchy title, I can’t imagine why they didn’t go with it. We could’ve seen Cleopatra instead, man,” Shane teases. “I heard Burton and Taylor got kicked out filming at the Vatican for ‘erotic vagrancy.’ It’s hard to beat that kind of chemistry.”  

Ryan laughs, slapping his chest with his hand. He leaves a little streak of butter on his shirt, barely perceptible, and Shane has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from reaching for Ryan’s hand and licking the butter off his fingertips one by one.

“Where to now?” Shane asks. “Dinner, and then back?”

Ryan smiles up at him, a mischievous crooked smile, one of his cheeks all bunched up and dimpled.

“Not quite,” he says. “Thought we’d grab some street meat and then hit the town, if that’s okay with you.”

Shane doesn’t know what ‘street meat’ entails, and he’s about to ask for clarification when Ryan rolls his eyes and punches him on the shoulder. “Hot dogs, man,” he says, “from those little streetside carts. You need to loosen up.”

“And then what?”

“You’ll see.”

They park outside the city and take the subway in. Shane’s used to the L train in Chicago, but he’s only been on the New York City subway a couple of times. Ryan navigates them into Manhattan with ease, though, like he does it all the time.

“You’re at home here,” Shane observes, as Ryan steers them to a particular cart. He orders a hot dog for himself, and a lemonade, and then he turns expectantly to Shane.

“Two, please,” Shane tells the vendor. “Can I get those Chicago-style?”

There’s a flurry of activity where Shane tries to explain to the man his elaborate and yet specific set of wants and needs from a hot dog and the vendor pretends not to speak English or to know what celery salt is. Ryan watches the whole display like he’s back in the movie theater, putting away his entire hot dog in a few neat bites and noisily stirring his straw around in his cup.

“Just for that, I’ll take a second dog with _only_ ketchup on it,” he tells the man, eyeing Shane’s two piled-high hot dogs. “What anybody would ever want with a sport pepper is a mystery to me.”

“Ketchup on a hot dog is blasphemy,” Shane says. “You’re a blasphemer.”

“I’m a lot of things,” Ryan says quietly as they walk away, hot dogs in hand. “Try me on for size and find out.”

“I could, but you wouldn’t fit,” Shane says, scrutinizing up and down Ryan’s body. “Too short in the leg.”

Ryan kicks out with his foot to catch Shane gently at the ankle. Shane had forgotten how much he missed being in a city; the Catskills are beautiful, and he loves the fresh air and the mountains, but there’s nothing like the energy of a downtown at night.

They walk for a while, eating and chatting, and as it gets later the people on the street get weirder: business suits turn into slouchy sweaters and berets, women’s tightly-coiffed and curled hairdos turn into big Brigette Bardot beehives. Shane can practically feel his mother clutching her pearls from here.

“Where are we going?” Shane asks, watching a couple of beatniks in black turtlenecks wander by sharing a joint. “I—are they—it’s barely dark!”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Calm down, sir, it’s just the Village. Nobody’s gonna, like, corner you and shoot you up with some heroin against your will.”

“Thanks, I’ve got a brand-new fear now,” Shane mutters. It hadn’t even occurred to him that it was a thing a person might do until the moment Ryan said it, but now it’s going to keep him up at night.

Ryan leads him to a nondescript door in a poorly-lit alley. There’s a guy at the door who looks them up and down and then thrusts a hand out, and Ryan shoves some money into it. Shane can’t quite tell how much. The guy steps aside and Ryan hustles Shane through the doorway.

Inside it’s just a bar. It’s got a tiki theme, like every third bar in the city these days, palm fronds and bric-a-brac everywhere, with rattan chairs and couches for seating.

The crowd is mostly men, Shane notices, but also a few women in stylish black cigarette pants smoking as they flip through the jukebox. When he looks closer, there are people he doesn’t quite know how to categorize, so androgynous are their clothes and hair. And at least one person he’s fairly sure is a man with a beard wearing a dress.

“So, uh, what’s all this, then?” Shane asks, trying very hard not to stare. Ryan reaches down to grab his hand, and Shane flinches away on instinct—but Ryan follows through and chases it down. Nobody pays them the slightest bit of attention.

“This,” Ryan says, “is the revolution.”

*

It is, Shane comes to realize, a gay bar. For people who are like that—he almost thinks _like me_ , but something holds him back. He still doesn’t know what he is, and he’s tired of trying to figure out if there are words for it.

The only word for him right now is _gobsmacked_. His gob has been well and truly slapped right off his face.

“How can a place like this exist?” he asks Ryan, sipping at a tropical-flavored rum drink right out of a hollowed-out coconut. “Right here in the middle of the city? I’m surprised they haven’t shut it down. It’s illegal.”

Ryan slides his hand into the back pocket of Shane’s pants. Shane feels very out of place, not cool enough to be here, not cool enough to be here with _Ryan_. He feels tall everywhere he goes, but here he feels like he sticks out like a sore thumb. A too-big, too-tall beacon of look-at-me.

“I don’t ask a lot of questions, to be honest,” Ryan says with a shrug. He sneaks a look around, and then he says, low, “I think the mob owns it. Nothing’s illegal if you pay the cops enough, is it?”

“I don’t know, _is it_?” Shane says, starting to feel a little hysterical, overwhelmed by all the things he doesn’t know, by this whole world that apparently existed right under his nose. Ryan squeezes his ass through his pants, probably meant to be reassuring.

“You’ll be fine,” Ryan says. “Just don’t talk to anybody who looks like they want to arrest you for sodomy. Unless you’re into that.

Shane launches into a coughing fit, spraying his drink everywhere. “Into what? Into…into sodomy? Or into being _arrested_ for sodomy?”

“Come on,” Ryan says, clapping Shane on the back with a laugh and failing to clarify. “The real party’s in the back.”

Shane’s more than a little wary of what they might find in the back, but he follows Ryan through a door and it’s only a dance club. It’s a lot like the scene he stumbled in on in the staff mess at Kellerman’s at the beginning of the summer, except the booze is flowing free and they’re in public. It feels like a vital distinction.

“I just wanted you to see that places like this exist,” Ryan says, watching Shane survey the room. “I wanted you to know that there are places for people who don’t fit in everywhere. Here, and in L.A. and San Francisco.”  

“This…sure is a place,” Shane says. He doesn’t know what else to say. He knows Ryan is making a pitch here, even though he promised he wouldn’t ask again. A pitch for what their life could be, in a city big enough to be anonymous.

Ryan holds out his hand.

“I—here?” Shane asks. “Right in front of everyone?”

“Of course here,” Ryan confirms. “Right in front of everyone.”

He looks impossibly good like this, his white shirt tight enough to show of the shape of him, unbuttoned at the neck and chest just a little more than would be considered seemly. Shane’s wanted to touch all day, has barely been able to restrain himself. He won’t deny himself now.

He takes Ryan’s hand and lets Ryan tug him onto the dance floor. Lets Ryan slot their hips together and guide them in a familiar rhythm with palms plastered firm at his sides. A new song comes on—

[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSoPeZMHMf4) _Let me tell you 'bout a place_ __  
Somewhere up a New York way  
Where the people are so gay  
Twistin' the night away

—and a few men on the dance floor snicker into the air as they spin and twist.

“Bit on the nose,” Shane says, as Ryan turns him in tightly-controlled circles and then tugs him back in close. Shane can’t help it, he laughs too, despite his nerves, at the look of joy on Ryan’s face. “Do you think Sam Cooke knows there’s a whole subculture out here willfully misconstruing his lyrics?”

Soon the nerves fall away. It’s impossible to be too afraid when the music is good and the company is better. Nobody’s there to bother them. They’re all there for the same reason: to escape the monotony of their everyday lives, to be themselves for just a few hours, surrounded by other people who understand.

“You’ve come a long way, baby,” Ryan says into his ear a few songs later, hoarse from singing along. “Thanks for letting me show you off.”

It’s a slow tune playing now, one Shane doesn’t recognize but he likes, a woman crooning high and soft. They’ve given up the fancy moves and they’re just swaying together under the dim lights. Ryan’s pressed against him from thigh to chest. Shane can still smell the popcorn, or maybe he’s just imagining it.

“I don’t want to go back to the resort,” Shane confesses. “I don’t want to spend these last few weeks wasting time playing croquet and golf and euchre and only seeing you for stolen hours here and there. It’s bullshit.”

“We don’t have to go back,” Ryan says, pulling back to consider him. “I mean, eventually, yeah, we do. I need the paycheck. But we could stay the night in the city and go back in the morning, if you want.”

“Stay where?”

“Get a room in a motel somewhere.”

“I thought you didn’t sleep with guests,” Shane points out, and gets an elbow to the solar plexus for his trouble. It’s true, though; back at the resort Shane always sneaks back to his cabin in the middle of the night, afraid to fall asleep and be found not in his own bed the next morning.

“I could be persuaded to make an exception just this once,” Ryan says. He doesn’t tell Shane what the persuading might entail, but Shane could hazard a guess. A whole night with Ryan, where they won’t be interrupted, after the day they’ve had, is all he wants.

“Oh my god,” Shane says. “This was—this whole thing was a date, wasn’t it.”

“Of course it was,” Ryan says, navigating them around the room around other dancing pairs, clutching at Shane’s hip. “You’re being wooed. This is my charm offensive.”

“It _is_ offensive, I’m offended. I’m not that kind of gal,” Shane retorts, as a snappier song starts up. He pulls his body back from Ryan’s so there are solid inches between them. “Please respect my frame! Where’s my pleasing arc?”

“I’ll show you a pleasing arc,” Ryan says, going to grab his ass, but Shane bats his hand away.

“Spaghetti arms! Will you give me some tension, please?”

“I’ve created a monster,” Ryan says. “You weren’t like this when I met you. Baby, I’ve got nothing _but_ tension.”

He tries to pull Shane in close, but Shane locks his arms, keeping them apart.

“You’re invading my dance space,” he admonishes, mimicking the crisp, barky tone Ryan gets when he’s frustrated during a lesson. “This is my dance space, and this is your dance space. Let’s cha-cha, shall we?”

Ryan howls with laughter, but he lets Shane lead for once. Shane sweeps him around the room, biting back a smile, pretending to be stern. “Don’t look down, look right up here,” he says when Ryan’s eyes stray downward. “So much for your charm offensive. More like a Bay of Pigs sort of situation, don’t you think?”

“Did I really snap at you like that?”

“You were a drill sergeant,” Shane says. “Very intimidating.”

“Come here, lover boy,” Ryan says, his voice unmistakably fond, and this time Shane allows himself to be hauled back in close. “How’s about we call an end to all this erotic vagrancy and find a room for the night?”

*

After a brief flurry of bicker over who will pay for the room, they end up at a sleepy little motel on the outskirts of the city. Ryan eventually agreed that Shane could pay, but put his foot down when Shane wanted to splurge for a room at the Hilton.

At the desk, they ask for a room with two beds. Shane tries very hard to project the impression that they won’t be getting up to any funny business in the room. It’s strange, because he’s spent twenty-odd years of his life effortlessly projecting exactly that impression and getting up to zero funny business, but now he feels like he can’t quite summon it. Like it must be obvious what they’re about to do.

Ryan’s got a duffel bag with him, one he pulled from the trunk of his car when he parked. Shane eyes it as they walk across the parking lot to their room.

“You planned for this too,” Shane says. “You tramp!”

“I don’t know about planned,” Ryan says, hoisting the bag to his other arm to unlock the door and push it open. “More like hoped.”

Shane hesitates in the doorway for a moment, and then he follows Ryan inside. It’s a pretty standard hotel room: two double beds with a dresser in between, a small bathroom, and a wet bar. There’s nothing standard about the way his stomach feels, all tied up in knots.

Ryan takes his shirt off the minute the door’s locked behind them, and Shane starts to babble.

“Tonight was really fun,” he says. “The movie was, the movie was great, thanks for—and the club, that was different, I’ve never—that guy in the dress was something, huh, is that—”

Ryan sits down on the edge of the bed, legs splayed wide apart, and watches him go.

“And the, with the motorcycle, wow, I wonder, I’ve never ridden a motorcycle but I bet it’s, um, crazy.” He can feel himself touching his hair too much, playing with it like an anxious tic until it’s standing up funny.

“Shane.”

“I’ve never even smoked a joint, isn’t that stupid? To be at college for four years and never try it? But I can’t believe those guys were just smoking up on the sidewalk like—”

“ _Shane_.”

Shane stops talking when Ryan crooks a finger at him. He goes, stands between Ryan’s legs at the side of the bed. When Ryan puts his hands on the backs of Shane’s thighs, he shivers.

“Yeah.”

“You’re nervous.” Ryan presents it as a statement of fact rather than a question. His hands wind their way around Shane’s legs. One of them comes to rest on the waistband of his pants, thumb on the button of his fly.

“Only a little,” Shane lies.

“Okay, but _why_ are you nervous? You’ve—we’ve already.”

“Feels different,” Shane says. It sounds dumb when he says it back like that, but it does feel different to him. Something about the day, about the city, feels weighted with expectation. He can’t even put his finger on what’s got him so keyed up, but then Ryan smiles a knowing smile.

“Oh,” he says. “This is because I said the word _sodomy_ , right? And now you’re thinking about it and it’s got you all flustered.”

“I’m not _flustered_ ,” Shane says, very obviously flustered. He can feel his face going bright pink all the way down his neck and to the tips of his ears.

“It’s okay,” Ryan says, rubbing his hands along Shane’s long thighs reassuringly. “You’re thinking about it and you’re flustered. Happens to the best of us. I don’t expect it or anything, you know.”

Shane completely, totally, one hundred percent doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what’s expected of him. He doesn’t even know if that’s a thing he _wants_ ; only that it’s undeniably been on his mind tonight, ever since Ryan joked about it.

“I don’t. Is that…does it feel good?” It must, surely. He doesn’t know why people would do it otherwise, with the vast array of things that do feel good open to them. He licks his lips without meaning to and then bites his lip, sheepish to have asked.

Ryan rolls his neck, considering, and Shane watches the motion: a long, slow loop back and around, exposing the hollows and dips of his throat.

“It does,” he says finally. “I think it does, when it’s done properly. But today was about spending time with you, you know. Not getting inside you.”

The blush Shane has going on might have been attractive once, but he can tell he’s fire-engine red now. His face is _hot_ , like he’s eaten a pepper, like if he raised his hand to his cheek he’d burn his own fingerprints off. He doesn’t know why Ryan has to go and say things like that, things that are as sweet as they are filthy.

“I don’t know what I think about that,” he says. “I want to think about it.”

Ryan looks up at him, face serious.

“Think about it all you need. Me personally, I’m gonna think about you thinking about it, and—” he makes a lewd hand gesture, and then he beams with pride when Shane bursts out laughing. Shane feels his nerves slipping away again, back to wherever they retreat when Ryan says something funny or makes a silly, earnest face.

“Stop,” Shane says after he’s laughed his fill.

“Sure won’t,” Ryan replies, and then he tugs at Shane’s belt loops with both hands. Shane falls onto the bed, half on top of him, with none of the grace of a man who’s been taking dance lessons for months. “C’mon, let me relax you.”

*

Ryan’s relaxation techniques are, it emerges, unconventional. But effective.

Ryan’s got Shane laid out naked on his stomach, rubbing his back, the back of his arms, his ass, the back of his thighs. He pulls a tub of something from his bag and unscrews the lid, and Shane turns his head to the side to look.

“ _I don’t expect it_ , says the man who’s got petroleum jelly in his duffel like a degenerate,” Shane cracks weakly. All of him, save one important bit, is indeed very relaxed. Ryan’s hands, when they return to his lower back, are soft and slick.

“Maybe it’s for my hair!” Ryan protests.

“Is it, Ryan? Is it for your hair?”

Ryan’s quiet for a moment, rubbing firm circles into the dead center of Shane’s back, right above his spine. And then: “Not as such.”

“That’s what I thought,” Shane says. He ruts down into the bed a little, in spite of himself, when Ryan’s hands slide down his body to his ass and massage there.

“I like watching you feel things you’ve never felt before,” Ryan says. “I like being the one who makes you feel them. That a crime?”

“It’s literally a crime,” Shane points out, but he’s finding it hard to worry about that too much because Ryan’s pressing a kiss to his lower back, and then his tailbone, and then—god—the seam where his back slopes into his ass. “Whatcha, uh, what’re you doing back there?”

“Dragging you kicking and screaming into the sixties, obviously,” Ryan says, biting at his left asscheek, and then his right. “You’re going to leave this place a whole new man. You’ll have learned more from me in three months than you did in four years at the University of Chicago.”

He lays a firm hand on Shane’s lower back, pushing his back into an arch. Shane lets himself be wrangled into position, head on the pillow and legs splayed. He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him. He waits for a very long, breathless moment, erection hard and heavy against the sheets, waiting for Ryan to do something. _Anything_.

“Okay,” he says, when he realizes Ryan’s waiting for a word from him. He’s not entirely sure what he’s giving permission for, even, but he knows he has to find out.

Ryan grabs him hard at the sides, pulling his cheeks wide apart. Shane feels the puff of his breath, hot against him for a second, and then Ryan’s applying his tongue to a place where Shane did not previously think a tongue belonged.

“Gosh,” he says again, completely flummoxed. Ryan’s tongue is licking against his hole in slow, gentle swipes, like he’s giving Shane the chance to pull himself away. His fingertips are digging into Shane’s ass to keep it open for him, the nails pressing half-moons into Shane’s skin.

It is, as Ryan promised, unlike anything he’s ever felt. Ryan’s mouth is hot against him, his tongue insistent. It makes Shane writhe against the bed and stretch his arms up to clutch at the sheets above his head.

Ryan picks up the intensity, licking ever-so-slightly in, letting his tongue catch the rim, go rigid, and _press_.

Shane pushes his face into the pillow and, without meaning to, his ass back against Ryan’s mouth. He can feel his whole body unfurling and loosening, spreading out to fill the bed. It feels like his insides are unfurling too, pouring out through the point of his toes and the hot air of his mouth against the pillow.

The sensation is mind-blowing, but again it’s Ryan’s enthusiasm that really takes Shane apart, that demolishes his reserves and leaves him shaking. He’s had sex he would qualify as nice, or even great, but he’s never felt like someone could eat him alive and still not get enough.

Ryan licks into him again and again, spreading him with callused hands and opening him up, until Shane can do nothing stutter bitten-back groans into the pillowcase. He pushes back and forth between Ryan and the bed, caught between them and unsure which way he’s more pulled.

“Go ahead, rub against it,” Ryan encourages. He presses Shane down into the bed by the small of his back, helping Shane move against it. When Shane whines, Ryan’s mouth is back on him in a hurry.

“You put your mouth all kinds of places that would never occur to me,” Shane says. His voice comes out strange, weak and wheezy. “Gonna—oh—close.”

Ryan pulls his mouth away. Shane’s about to complain when he feels Ryan’s slick finger nudging at him, just rubbing carefully at his hole. “May I?”

Shane makes a garbled noise.

“Please, I—Jesus, Ryan. Anything.”

Ryan slides in, a single deft motion, and Shane almost yelps from the pressure. It doesn’t hurt—he’s too open for that, too relaxed from Ryan’s mouth on him—but it’s another brand-new feeling in a night that’s been full of them. He bears down and back and feels Ryan twist inside.

“That’s real good. You really are a fast learner,” Ryan says. Chills run up Shane’s whole body, every inch of his skin covered in goosebumps. Ryan leans down again to apply his mouth back to the rim of Shane’s hole, to lick around the base of his own finger as he slides it slowly out and back in.

“Oh god,” Shane whimpers. He’s about to demand that Ryan _do it already_ when he realizes there’s no point, because he won’t last long enough. He’s going to come now, in a matter of seconds, the very next time Ryan’s tongue passes against him.

He’s gone his whole life without really understanding what bodies were _for_. He inhabits his body only by necessity, and sometimes he resents it for its gangliness and lack of grace. He’s always done most of his living in his own head and never really associated his physical body with his _real_ self.

Until this summer. Until Ryan and dancing and fucking taught him to harness the things he thought he didn’t like about his body and turn them into unmitigated, liberated pleasure.

He comes hard, all over the sheets, with a shout he doesn’t bother to stifle and his blood roaring in his ears. Ryan makes a gratified sort of noise back at him, almost into him. He licks Shane through it, and when Shane’s body has stopped twitching he pulls away to bite at his ass cheek again.

That’s when Shane thinks, at the most inopportune time: _oh fuck, I love him_.

“Okay, well,” he says, after a minute. “So then let’s—are you gonna—”

Ryan laughs.

“No, I’m not gonna. Not tonight. You’ll like it better if you haven’t come, and besides, we’ve got neighbors. For such a mild-mannered guy you’re a noisy fuck, you know.”

Shane’s a little disappointed, but then Ryan’s unscrewing the Vaseline again. He rubs it along the back of Shane’s legs and the inside of Shane’s thighs.

“ _Now_ what’s happening?” Shane asks, a little aghast. He barely has the chance to get used to one new thing before Ryan’s throwing another step at him, another spin. Another sex thing he doesn’t quite understand.

“Next best thing,” Ryan says, and then he’s easing his cock between Shane’s thighs. Shane’s about to giggle, and then the head of it bumps against his balls and the laugh dies in his throat. “The Ivy League rub, just for you, College Boy.”

He starts to thrust, slow and steady. With his hands he pulls Shane’s hips off the bed, giving himself more room to work and kindly making sure Shane doesn’t chafe against the bed in his post-orgasm over-sensitivity.

Shane experimentally clenches his thighs together tighter around Ryan, and Ryan lets out a surprised moan into his shoulder blade.

“What’s it feel like?” Shane asks. He’s still kind of turned on, his whole body thrumming under Ryan’s, but he’s also dead curious.

“Feels like I’m fucking you, dummy,” Ryan grunts.  His usually spectacular rhythm is starting to fail him; he’s moving against Shane in fits and starts, shuddering toward his own climax. “Tight, and slick, and you under me—”

“Next time I want it for real,” Shane says, and Ryan breathes in sharp.

“Let me, can I, will you let me come on you?” he asks, all in a rush, like he’s embarrassed to ask. Shane’s always known Ryan to be very polite about bodily fluids, almost businesslike, but he says it now as if it’s a _thing_ for him. Ryan doesn’t embarrass easy, not in bed.

“Sure,” he says. “Just not the hair.”

Ryan withdraws from his thighs, and Shane can’t tell if he’s laughing or moaning or both. He slides against the juncture of Shane’s ass and his legs, and then pulls Shane’s ass cheeks apart again to press between them. Ryan rubs the head of his cock against Shane’s hole once, twice, the ridge catching at him and opening him up— _he could just slide in_ , Shane thinks, _that would be okay_ —and then Ryan comes with a hoarse moan all over the most intimate parts of him.

It’s wet, Shane thinks. And sticky. And _wow_. He could take or leave the feeling itself, but the enormous satisfaction of seeing Ryan take what he wants and come apart so quickly doing it leaves him reeling.  

“Hang on, let me clean you up,” Ryan says, and then he’s up and off Shane and rummaging around in the bathroom, running the tap. He comes back with a damp washcloth. Shane’s about to protest that he’s fine, he can do it, when he thinks maybe Ryan wants to. So he lies there, legs spread wide, as Ryan cleans him up, and then rolls over so Ryan can get his front too.

“We’ll have to sleep on the other bed,” Shane says, making a face.

“Mmm,” Ryan agrees, but he shimmies in close and envelopes Shane with his arms, in no particular hurry.

“I used to be really respectable, you know,” Shane says, tucking into the crook of Ryan’s neck, finding all the warmest spots. “Missionary with the lights out, and all. You’re a terrible influence. You’re…you’re trouble.”

“Right here in River City,” Ryan agrees. “Sorry ‘bout that, Madam Librarian. They’ll make you turn in your cardigan.”

Shane’s starting to drift off to sleep, right here in the wet spot. They really should move, but he’s too exhausted and too boneless to mind it.

“Ryan,” he whispers right before he falls asleep.

“Yeah?” Ryan whispers back.

“You’re extremely in my dance space.”

The last thing he hears before he drifts off is Ryan’s giggle, high-pitched and infectious, as he snuggles in closer.

*

Shane is prepared for nights with Ryan to be great. But he’s not prepared—could never be prepared—for the devastation of a morning with Ryan.

Shane wakes up early, with the sun; the hotel curtains aren’t thick enough to prevent light from coming in. Ryan’s nudged up against his bare back, arm curled around Shane’s waist. His fingers twitch at Shane’s stomach when Shane wakes, stroking there like it’ll make his transition out of sleep easier.

“Morning,” Ryan says, voice unusually deep and hoarse from hours of disuse. “You should see your hair right now.”

“Hark who’s talking,” Shane says, sliding onto his back with a stretch to get a look at Ryan’s face. Sure enough, Ryan’s hair is sticking up in all directions, flat in the front and cowlicky in the back. Shane’s heart soars with how warm and happy and _good_ he feels, but an immediate sense of impending loss comes hot on its heels.

It will, he knows, be a lot harder to say goodbye to Ryan now, having spent the night with him like this. Having seen him first thing in the morning, smiling sleepily at Shane.

It’s a peek at what their life could be like every morning. Shane almost can’t bear the quiet domesticity of it, Ryan smiling at him around his toothbrush with a towel wrapped around his waist. Fussing over Shane’s hair in the mirror, grabbing the newspaper and the breakfast tray from outside the door, sticking out his tongue in concentration when he laces up his shoes.

Shane looks at all of it, because he has to, because he can’t allow himself to forget a single moment.

“We’d better get back,” Ryan says, putting his coffee down and pushing his plate aside. “I’ve got a lesson at ten.”

He reaches out for Shane’s hand and shoulders his bag with the other. At the doorway of the hotel room he drops Shane’s hand, and they go back out into the unforgiving world.

*

Shane doesn’t see Ryan at all the rest of the day. He doesn’t see Ryan the next day, either. He goes to the dance studio as usual, but Ryan’s not there.

It’s strange, but Shane’s not worried about it. Ryan’s working, after all. He can’t be available all the time, a much as Shane would like it.

He joins his family for dinner in the dining room, Steak Diane flambéed tableside in Madeira wine. Shane half-listens to the idle chatter, his mother’s weekly gossip report, and chews the overdone steak.

Partway through dinner, Max Rubin stops by the table to say hello. He often makes the rounds at dinner or breakfast, catching up with guests and being the face of the resort. The whole place runs on this cliquey sort of faux-camaraderie, Shane thinks. Good old boys and a false sense of superiority.

“—quite a rough weekend! We had to fire him, of course. Can’t have stealing, and after everything I did for him.”

Shane snaps back to full attention.

“Fire who, sorry?”

Mr. Rubin fixes him with a stare.

“Ryan Bergara. The dance instructor. I wasn’t happy to do it, but—”

“What do you mean, caught stealing?” Shane interrupts.

“Shane!” His mother admonishes him for his rudeness. He ignores her.

Rubin shakes his head, rueful, disappointed.

“Someone stole the petty cash box out of the administration building the night before last. I caught him in there a few weeks ago, middle of the night, apparently he had a key. Couldn’t have been anyone else. I had to let him go, of course.”

Mr. Rubin tactfully fails to mention that he caught Shane there too.

“Of course,” Shane’s father agrees. He’s very pointedly not looking at Shane, possibly to avoid gloating about bad influences.

Shane’s reeling, shocked. He knows Ryan, he knows that Ryan would never steal, that he couldn’t have done. And then Shane realizes: Ryan really, truly _couldn’t_ have done. The night before last they were together in a motel outside the city, hours away from the administration building and this whole fucking place.  

For just a moment, he’s frozen. He knows what he has to do, but he can’t make his mouth open. Here at this table, with his whole family staring at him, what he wants more than anything is the chance to ask Ryan what he’d prefer. What’s worse: to be thought, wrongly, a thief? Or to be thought, correctly, to be—Shane can’t even think it, any of the many cruel words people have for what they are to each other. Ryan will be sacked either way, and is it worth it for Shane to damn himself too?

There might be a way around it, a line he can walk. And if not, he’ll just have to dive in headfirst and pray it comes out alright. He owes Ryan nothing less.

He takes a deep breath.

“Mr. Rubin, there’s been a mistake. I’m sure Ryan didn’t do it. He wouldn’t steal.”  

“I appreciate that you two were friendly, Shane, but it’s not like just anybody can waltz in there in the middle of the night. You need a key, and he had it. Nobody else with a key to that building would ever need to steal anything in his life. The kid’s got no alibi.”

Shane shakes his head. He doesn’t know what that means, that Ryan could have ratted him out and chose not to.

“No, I mean, I know he couldn’t have done it, because—please trust me. You’ve known me and my family for how long, Mr. Rubin? Please just trust me that I know he didn’t.”

He shoots a beseeching look at his father. Mark Madej looks back, impassive, confused. No help from that corner, then.

“He couldn’t have taken the cash box because he was in a motel room two hours away from here all night,” Shane goes on. Rubin’s eyebrows go up. “And the reason I know he was is, um. Is that I was with him.”

The table is silent. Even the baby, bouncing up and down on Cynthia’s knee, stops her babbling.

“We went to the cinema, and then we went out dancing in Manhattan, and then it was too late to drive back so we—so we got a room. We were up most of the night, he couldn’t have left without me knowing it, sir.”

“Well, there you go!” Shane’s mother exclaims. “How fortunate that you can vouch for him.”

She looks from Shane, to Max Rubin, to her husband. When she finds that none of them are smiling, her own smile freezes on her face. Shane can see her grasping out, wondering and not understanding. His father shakes his head at her, and her face falls.

“Friendly,” Jeff snorts into his martini.

Cynthia hits him on the arm. “Shut up, Jeff. Stop—well, it’s not like someone’s _died_ ,” she says to the table. Shane realizes that she’s known all along, since she caught them in the boathouse. Probably she’s been doing damage control for weeks and never said a word about it.

And in truth, someone has died. The version of Shane they all knew, the man who put his head down and did what he was supposed to do and never put a toe out of line, he’s gone forever. In his place is a new Shane they don’t know yet, that maybe they’ll never get the chance to know. That’s up to them.

“I won’t apologize for my own goddamn business,” Shane says, as firm as he can. “But he didn’t steal. And if his skin was paler you would never have accused him without any proof.”

He knows it’s rude to say, just as well as he knows it’s the truth. Mr. Rubin just shakes his head, his mouth a thin line, and then he’s gone.

Shane’s father stands up from the table, his chair making a loud scrape on the floor. He tosses his napkin on his plate and he leaves without another word.

Shane doesn’t know what propels him up, only that he has to follow. He finds his father out on the big wraparound deck, staring out into the mountains, dusk falling around him.

“I said I wouldn’t apologize, and I meant it,” Shane says. “Not for that. But I’m sorry I lied to you.”

His father looks over at him. His face is softer than Shane’s expecting, or maybe just defeated. He’s got his forehead in his hand, like he’s got a headache.

“But you lied to me too,” Shane presses on. “You’ve told me my whole life that everyone’s alike, that everyone deserves a fair break, but you meant everyone like _you_. You told me you wanted me to make the world a better place, but you meant by joining the business and marrying a nice Smith girl.”

Mark Madej still hasn’t said a word. He just stares, and Shane can feel himself working up to angry, or to brokenhearted, or to somewhere in between.

“There are a lot of things about me that aren’t what you thought,” Shane says. “But if you love me, you have to love all the parts of me.”

And there it is: his line in the sand. He doesn’t know what his life will look like now, what options are open to him, whether he’s even still got that job or a chance at that life his father envisioned. Whether he could ever settle for that, knowing what he knows now.

Shane thinks he might cry, and that’s when he knows it’s time to go.

*

He goes to Ryan’s cabin, but Ryan’s long gone. Most of the furniture’s there, but the posters aren’t, and the clothes aren’t, and the record player isn’t.

It’s just an empty, silent room that once held music.

*

Sara finds him at the lake again, at their spot. At what used to be their spot, years ago, and has become their spot again.

She plops down on the ground next to him and slips her small hand easily into his big one.

“That was a good flounce, back there,” she says after a while. “Dramatic.”

“Ryan’s gone, so it was all for nothing,” Shane says. “And they hate me.”

“They don’t hate you.” She rests her head on his shoulder. Her hair’s soft and it smells like citrus, the same shampoo she’s used as long as he’s known her. “They just don’t understand. They’ll either come around or they won’t.”

“Yes, those are the two options,” he says drily.

“It wasn’t for nothing,” she insists. “You stood up for him and you stood up for yourself. You would never have done that a few months ago. That’s—you’re a different person now. You’re a man, and not a boy, and that’s not _nothing_.”

“He asked me to come to California with him, you know,” Shane tells her.

It hurts, the finality with which that door’s been slammed shut. He thought he’d made up his mind not to do it, but some part of him must have been still considering it as an option, because he feels the loss of it now.  

“Oh, Shane,” she sighs against his arm.

“He wanted to…make shows and movies, and bring me along to help.”

“So why don’t you do it anyway? If that’s what you want to do.”

“What?” Shane looks down at her, confused.

“If you want to go to Hollywood and make films, you want to do it regardless of whether he’s with you or not. So just _go_.”

There’d be nothing preventing him, except his good sense. He owns his car outright, and he’s got money stored away in the bank and some savings bonds from his grandparents. The only thing tying him here is him.

“I could,” he says slowly.

“And when I graduate in April I’ll come out too. We can swan around Beverly Hills and go to the beach and whatever else California people do, and it’ll be grand. I just have to finish the degree or Daddy will murder me.”

He smiles to think of it, her in a swimsuit with a scarf tied around her hair, the pair of them driving up the Pacific Coast Highway on a sunny day with the ocean glittering beside them. The only problem is that when he imagines it, Ryan’s there too, behind the wheel. It’s not quite right without him.

“Yeah,” he says, “Maybe.”

“You love him,” Sara presses. “It’s okay to just feel that and be sad, you know.”

He closes his eyes.

“Yes,” he says, and that’s enough. Yes, he loved— _loves_ —Ryan. Yes, he’s sad. If he’d known the other morning would be the last morning as well as the first, he would have said it.

*

The last two weeks of August at the resort pass in a blur. Shane spends a lot of time with Sara. He plays round after round of volleyball with Zach and Ned and TJ until his muscles ache, to make up for the lack of dancing. They must have heard rumblings, but they very tactfully don’t say a word when Shane runs his body into the ground and comes out exhausted.

Shane’s mother and sister handle him delicately. Cynthia finds lots of reasons for them to take the baby outside, away from the lodge and the people and the furtive looks and speculation. Shane hoists little Christine on his hip and wonders what Ryan would make of him with a baby on his arm.

Shane’s father doesn’t handle him at all. He doesn’t avoid Shane—he’ll ask Shane to pass the salt or wish him good morning—but he doesn’t say anything substantive either. Shane lets it alone; if his father is mourning the son he thought he had, Shane doesn’t need to know about it.

Then, one morning in late August, over ham and English muffins:

“Shane,” his father says from behind his newspaper. Next to him, his mother freezes. “You’ve still got the job, if you want it.”

He frames it like it’s a choice, _Shane’s_ choice, a choice he can make. Not like an order. Shane holds his breath.

“You’d be an asset to the business, and to me,” Mark goes on. “But you’re no good to anyone miserable.”

Shane exhales the breath he was holding.

“Let me—can I think about it? Just for a few days.”

“Of course,” his father says.

Shane realizes nobody’s called him _baby_ in weeks.

*

Kelsey finds him the week before the season ends, in a panic.

He’s barely exchanged more than a few sentences with Kelsey all summer. Shane knows she and Ryan were close, but Ryan rarely talked about their friendship outside the context of dancing—possibly because they were together for a while, and he thought it would make Shane feel awkward.

“The dance,” she says unceremoniously, without a word of pleasantries to break things in. “Do you know it?”

“I know your part, mostly. Why?”

“What you mean, _why_?” The smile that’s permanently on her face is still there, but it’s looking a little frayed around the edges. “He’s gone, and the end-of-season party’s next week, and we’re supposed to close the farewell pageant out with the big dance.”

“I—oh, Kelsey, there’s no way. I can’t lead. I’m a total mess, physically and mentally and probably spiritually.” He gestures up and down at himself, as if to say _see_?  

“You sure are,” Kelsey says, impossibly cheery. “But you’re better than nothing, which is what I currently have. So do you know it?”

Shane sighs. He thinks about the look on Ryan’s face if he were to say no, after all of this practice. After all of the time Ryan invested in making Shane’s body recognize itself as a friend rather than an enemy.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I know it.”

And just like that, Shane’s roped into dancing in front of a hundred guests and his entire family with a woman he barely knows, doing steps he only knows backwards, while in possession of the world’s most noodly arms.  The summer might as well end this way, he supposes. His spirit’s already been broken every other way it can be broken, so what’s a little more public humiliation?

He thought Ryan was a tough teacher, but Ryan’s got nothing on Kelsey. They practice for hours a day that week. He works so hard it’s almost a relief to end the day too exhausted to think. He falls into bed like a dead man every night, Kelsey’s voice counting steps in his head.

 _Ryan’s_ voice counting steps in his head.

Shane still doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he sees the ghost of Ryan everywhere he goes. He sees Ryan in the boathouse, and in the copse of trees by the administration building, and leaning against the doorway of the dance studio. He feels the ghost of Ryan’s hands on him when he twirls Kelsey around the dance floor.

Finally it’s the last night, the grand finale of the summer. The energy is exactly like the last day of camp; all the guests gather together for a grand dinner in the dining room, followed by a farewell pageant and a dance. Shane has a vague idea that his sister’s been working on something for the pageant for a while, but honestly he hasn’t a clue about details.

It occurs to him that he may have been a little self-absorbed this summer. He didn’t spend much time with his siblings because he thought he’d be seeing them all the time for years to come, but now that he’s considering leaving he regrets it. He listens to his brother’s kids argue and watches his mother talk baby-talk to Charlotte, and he thinks, _I’d miss them, if I went away_.

It’s strange: at the beginning of the summer he dreaded seeing them, and now, in a way, he dreads to leave them again. No matter what they think of him now, he doesn’t feel like the baby of the family any more.  

Once all the dishes are cleared away, Kelsey comes to find him. She’s wearing a bright pink dress, lace on the bodice and nothing but a few strings in the back, and he gets nervous all over again just seeing her in costume.

“Come on, slugger,” she says, pulling him up from the table. “I’ve got a surprise for you, before we go on.”

“Before you go _where_?” Shane’s mother asks, curious, her nose for a hot story as keen as it ever was.

“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Shane says. He’s embarrassed to be doing this, for the fool he’s about to make of himself.

Kelsey pulls him backstage. Her grip on Shane’s shoulder is so firm that he wants to wiggle away. Honestly, for such a tiny, smiley person, she’s terribly intimidating when she wants to be.

“Kelsey, what is it, Jesus—”

And then he stops short.  

Standing there in jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers, looking more like himself than Shane’s ever seen him, is Ryan.

*

“Oh,” Shane says. _Dumber than a box of hair. Good work, old son._

“Hi,” Ryan says. He’s nervous too; Shane can tell because his hands are going non-stop, at his hair, scratching at his jaw, fidgeting in his pockets. “Nice tux. You look like Clark Gable without the funny little mustache.”

“Frankly, my dear,” Shane starts. “Etcetera, etcetera.”

Kelsey gives Ryan a kiss on the cheek. To Shane, she says, “Five minutes to showtime.” Then she makes herself scarce.

“I thought you’d be most of the way to California by now,” Shane says. Ryan shrugs. Even now Shane’s captivated by the way the fabric of his shirt catches and stretches over the muscles of his shoulders.

“I left some stuff behind,” he says. “Important stuff. Thought I’d better swing by and pick it up.”

“I’m sorry if I made the wrong choice.” This, more than almost anything, is what Shane’s been wanting to say to Ryan for the last two weeks, the thing he thinks about all the time. “I didn’t know what was worse, and I knew you’d be fired anyway, so—I don’t know. I just couldn’t let them think you stole.”

“It was the right choice,” Ryan says. “I told you that you were brave. And here you are, about to go dance in front of everybody? I bet you wouldn’t have imagined that a few months ago.”

Shane wants, so badly, to touch him. He wants to reach out and pull Ryan in close, to smell his deodorant and the pomade in his hair, to kiss him. He’s furious that he can’t, and he shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t try.

“Wish I was dancing with you,” he says instead.

“Yeah, me too, but they’d probably throw fruit at my head or something. We’ll get ‘em next time. I’ll watch you from the back.”

“Please come find me before you go,” Shane says. “I’ll help you load your stuff up, say a proper goodbye.”

Ryan just blinks at him, and then his smile grows impossibly wider. He shakes his head.

“You’re a goddamn idiot. Go on, break a leg. And for fuck’s sake, keep your back straight and your frame locked. Everybody’ll know that’s my work out there, so don’t humiliate me.”  

A few minutes later, Shane’s leading Kelsey out onto the stage. She beams into the crowd. He can’t quite match her, but he plasters an unconvincing smile on his face.

Then the music kicks in, and he holds his other hand out for Kelsey’s and it happens: he forgets about everything and just _dances_. It’s not quite as good as dancing with Ryan, but he knows Ryan’s out there watching. Every spin feels right, every step is familiar, and when Kelsey’s body moves against his own it brings nothing but happy memories flooding back.

It’s just joy, and a few sprinklings of that old _fuck you, dad_ defiance back again. He can feel the energy of the crowd, can hear them clapping and hooting. He hears TJ yell, “Get it, Madej!” and has to work to not laugh.

During a step sequence, his eyes seek out Ryan’s in the back of the room. Ryan’s leaning against the doorway, and nobody seems to have noticed him yet to kick him out—or else Sara’s influence is at work. His eyes lock with Shane, and he gives a thumbs up. Then he tilts his chin up and squares his shoulders, indicating that Shane should do the same.

Shane feels his posture straighten, like Ryan’s put extra steel in his spine.

They even pull off the lift, he and Kelsey, which Shane was nervous about. But she’s light and his core’s a lot stronger than it was a few months ago, and he’s able to lift her over his head without much trouble and hold her there while the crowd whoops and hollers.

And then, just like that, it’s done. It’s all done: the dance, and the strangest, most terrifying summer of his life.

Shane looks for Ryan immediately after, but he doesn’t see him. Instead he goes back to his family’s table, undoing the bow tie of his tux as he goes.

Cynthia jumps up right away to hug him, her eyes shiny with tears. “Shane, I had no idea—you were wonderful!”

“Pretty good, man,” Scott agrees.

“Ryan taught me,” Shane says with a jut of his chin, daring somebody to say something rude. Even Jeff keeps his fat mouth shut.

“I think you get it from me,” his mother gushes. “I used to be quite a dancer myself, you know, before your father got too busy for lessons.”

Shane knows from Ryan that this is demonstrably untrue, but he lets it slide in the name of familial harmony. “Maybe,” he says. “It took a lot of work. I’m no natural.”

His father coughs. “You sure are full of surprises.” Then his eyes flick to the left, over Shane’s shoulder.

Ryan’s there; Shane can tell before he looks, because he can feel the familiar heat of Ryan at his side, the barest touch of Ryan’s pinky finger trailing along the side seam of his pants at his hip.

“Good evening, Mr. Madej,” Ryan says, unfailingly polite. “Mrs. Madej. Your son’s turned into quite the dancer.” He nods in acknowledgment of Cynthia, who smiles at him, and Jeff, who does not. Then he nudges at Shane’s side with his elbow.

“You ready to go? Need me to grab anything from your cabin?”

The vibe at the table immediately shifts, the jovial chatter giving way to confusion. Shane feels the earth wobble under his feet, so he has to grab the back of his sister’s chair to avoid stumbling.

“Go? Shane—where are you going?”

Shane ignores his mother, not out of rudeness but because he simply doesn’t have room in any part of himself for a single solitary thing other than Ryan looking at him with that easygoing smile and eyes that are bright with mischief.

“But I thought—”

“I said I was forgetting something important. I won’t leave it behind,” Ryan says. “Come on, man. Keep up. I meant you, dumbass.”

This is it, then. The opportunity Shane thought was lost to him forever. The moment of deciding who he’s going to be, and where he’s going to be it, and with whom he’ll share it all. He looks around the table at his family, his family whom he loves. He looks at Ryan, who seems utterly at ease when he meets Shane’s gaze, confident in Shane to the end.  

In the end it’s really not that difficult a choice at all. The crushing joy and relief of making the decision, of feeling it settle final and _right_ in his stomach, is a gift.

“I’m ready,” Shane says. “Just gotta throw some stuff in my suitcase and say my goodbyes.”

“Goodbyes?” Cynthia asks. “Shane, what…?”

“We’re going to California,” Shane says. “Together. Right now.” His mother gasps, her hand fluttering to her mouth, but he ignores it and turns to his father. “I’m afraid I must respectfully decline your job offer. It’ll be a great job for someone. Just not for me.”

There’s a flurry of activity then, his mother talking a mile a minute in his ear, his sister throwing herself at him for a farewell hug, baby Christine making little cooing noises when he kisses her on the forehead. His brother clapping a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head like he’s never seen anything like it—which probably he hasn’t.

“I don’t understand it,” Scott says. “Not a bit of it. But good luck.”

They finally get away about ten minutes later, Shane having promised his mother ten times that he’ll write and get regular haircuts. On his way out he looks for Sara, and when he spots her he just gives a wave. She nods, beaming, and claps a hand over her heart.

No need for a big teary goodbye there. He’ll be seeing her soon enough anyway.

*

They’re out of the dining hall for two seconds when Ryan lets out a triumphant whoop and grabs for his hand. “That was great! The looks on their faces!”

He looks around, left and right, but there’s nobody there. Everybody’s in the dining hall, enjoying the party. Ryan pulls Shane in close by the cummerbund, grasps Shane’s chin in his hand, and pulls Shane’s face down to his for a kiss. It’s all the sweeter because Shane thought he’d never have it again.

“The minute I get you properly alone,” Ryan says, “I’m gonna—”

There’s a familiar dry cough behind them. Shane springs back, wiping his mouth. His father’s standing there, looking pointedly away, pink-faced and stern.

“I wanted to walk you out,” Mark Madej says. “And I have—there’s things I want to say. This is not the…this is not the life I imagined for you.”

Ryan opens his mouth to fight about it, but Shane puts a steadying hand on his shoulder. Whatever his father has to say, Shane wants to hear it.

“No,” Shane agrees. “It sure isn’t. But it’s the one I’ve chosen.”

“Right,” his father says. “Every man has to choose for himself. I only—your mother and I only wanted your life to be easier than ours was. We wanted to smooth the way for you, give you every chance to be happy.”

“He _is_ happy,” Ryan interjects. “Can’t you see on his face that he’s happy? Do you people even know what happy looks like?”

Shane watches his father size Ryan up, head to toe. Ryan, to his credit, only stands up straighter.

“I can,” Mark says. “If I was…if I was harsh about I, if I was cruel, it was only because I knew how much more difficult his life would become in a million different ways. I was afraid for him.”

“I was afraid for him too,” Ryan says. “Sitting at a desk all hunched over, going home to a life that was picked for him. That’ll kill a person, you know. We’re not all built for that.”

Shane’s father nods his head slowly.

“I’m _right here_ ,” Shane says, a little annoyed to be talked around like this. He can see his father and Ryan coming to some kind of unspoken agreement, right here in front of his eyes. “I’m not a piece of property you’re transferring. Nobody’s signing a deed to a car here.”

“Yeah, we know, big guy,” Ryan says placatingly. Something twitches at the corner of Mark Madej’s mouth that might even be a smile.

“Drive safe,” he tells Shane. “Call us when you’re settled in, or your mother will have kittens. And, well, here.”

He foists an envelope at Shane, an envelope Shane is sure contains a check. He’d been prepared for a lot of possibilities in this conversation, but he hadn’t expected _money_.

Shane wonders if Ryan will be insulted by the implication that they can’t look after themselves, but he knows that’s not what this is about all. It’s just that his father is low on words, bad at taking whatever’s running through his head and making them come out of his mouth right. Something tangible like this is a peace offering, the best way his father knows how.

“Oh, Dad,” he says. “Thanks, but I don’t need your money.”

“Take it,” Mark says, a little gruff. “Or your mother will worry. California’s expensive.”

“Jesus, man, take it,” Ryan says, surprising him. “Or are you forgetting I got fired?” Shane accepts the envelope and tucks it away.

His father reaches out again, to shake his hand. Shane clasps it in his own, matching his father’s firm grip, finally feeling like he’s earned the right. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, Shane’s father offers his hand to Ryan.

Ryan’s eyebrows go up. He shakes Shane’s father’s hand.

                             *

When they head out to the parking lot, Shane’s car is already pulled around, the keys in the ignition. He’s not sure how Ryan finagled any of this.

“Figured we’d take yours, since mine’s a piece of shit,” Ryan says. “Also I already sold it to Zack Evans for two hundred bucks, a bottle of bourbon, and a mint-condition Wilt Chamberlain trading card. So there’s that.”

“You were that sure I’d come with you?” Shane asks. “I only told you like a million times I wouldn’t.”

“Nobody walks away from sex that good,” Ryan says with a laugh. Then, when he sees that Shane’s serious, he tosses an arm around Shane’s waist. “A little bird told me you were wasting away with love for me. I took a risk. You know how I like the adrenaline.”

“Speaking of which,” Shane says. “You remember to pick up all your dumb ghost stuff? We might need it out in California, if you’re still all in on that hairbrained scheme.”

“It’s in the back,” Ryan says, with a flash of white teeth. He jumps in the passenger seat. “Get in. I wanna make Pennsylvania before we find a motel. You better nap on the way, because you’re dreaming if you think we’re using that bed for sleeping.”

“Trouble,” Shane says again, an anticipatory pleasure already building in his gut.

“Trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for—”

“Don’t even say it!”

Ryan cackles and throws the car in first gear. He reaches his hand out across the center seat for Shane, who takes it like he’s been waiting to do all day, and for weeks.

*

Ryan shakes him awake just over the border of New York and northern Pennsylvania. They’re in the dead-quiet parking lot of a Quality Inn within sight of the highway.

“You’d better wake up, or I’m going to leave you out here all night,” he says, flicking at the tip of Shane’s nose with his finger.

“Ugh,” Shane says, tasting the sleep thick in his mouth, stale and gross. “Please don’t, I’ll get a crick in my neck that’ll never come un-cricked.”

“Well, come on then.”

They troop into the lobby with a bag each and book a room—two beds again, a stupid, pointless lie Shane already resents having to tell. If the clerk thinks they make a strange pair, one man in a rumpled tuxedo and one in jeans, she doesn’t say a word about it.

Ryan pays with cash from the sale of his car, and Shane wonders how long it’ll be before they have the money argument. God knows it can wait.

Other things can’t wait.

The minute the door’s close behind them, Ryan’s on him, pushing him insistently against the wall.

“Shit, Ryan, let me—”

“Shut up, Shane. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks,” Ryan hisses, fumbling with Shane’s cummerbund and the tiny buttons on his shirt. “God knows this fucking tuxedo isn’t helping. Christ, you standing there like Sean Connery or something, like the tallest drink of water I ever saw, what gives you the right—”  

He’s clearly been working himself up to this for three or four hours in the car, while Shane slept beside him. Shane’s still pulling himself out of sleep and it’s a lot, but Ryan’s desperation is catching.

“As if I’d order a vodka martini,” Shane says, fingers plucking at the fly of Ryan’s denim to find the zip. He eventually gets it and tugs it down, pulling the jeans down over Ryan’s hips, and then before he can even say what he means to do he’s sliding down, his back to the wall, to land at a kneel at Ryan’s feet and press his mouth to Ryan’s cock through his underwear.

Ryan swears loud enough to wake the dead, but Shane doesn’t care. There were only about three other cars in the parking lot anyway.

Shane mouths at Ryan through the fabric just long enough to make good and certain he’s doing what he wants to be doing. Ryan’s thighs are trembling under his hands, his breathing is ragged and out-of-control already, and it makes Shane sure.

He sneaks his fingers under the waistband of Ryan’s underwear and pulls them down to join Ryan’s jeans at his knees.

“Baby,” Ryan breathes out, reverent. “Shane.”

He runs a hand through Shane’s hair and Shane looks up at him, which is a thrilling new vantage point. He’s very closed-in like this, caught between Ryan’s body and the wall, but he doesn’t dislike it.

“Missed you,” Shane says, simply and honestly. “I thought about you all the time. Tell me if I do it wrong.”

He puts his lips to the tip of Ryan’s cock, flinching a little with surprise when it jerks up to meet him.

“Told you already,” Ryan says, “There’s no wrong. There’s nothing you could do.”

Shane laughs and gives an experimental lick, base to tip, swirling around the head. It tastes like skin and it smells like _Ryan_ , like the most of Ryan a thing could be. Ryan’s description of the act already makes perfect sense to him.

“I could bite it off,” he says. “Theoretically.”

Ryan tosses his head back to laugh. His hand tightens in Shane’s hair.

“Fair enough. Don’t do that.”

“See, I’m nailing this already,” Shane says, and he leans back in to wrap his mouth around Ryan from the side, letting his tongue run up and down the underside of him. He tries the front angle again, takes his cock as far down as he can and has to pull back coughing. “Messy,” he says, wiping spit away.

“All the best things are,” Ryan says, reaching down to cup Shane’s chin and gently lead his mouth back.

Shane wishes his skill matched his desire; he wants to swallow Ryan down, to be full of him, he wants it hard and fast and overwhelming and he can’t quite manage it. But Ryan is so finely-attuned to Shane’s body, to all its needs and limits, that he guides Shane exactly to the _most_ he can do and keeps him there.

Although, come to think of it, it was like this the first time they danced together too. Ryan found the point that was almost too much for him and held their bodies on that line together, exactly at that spot, for as long as Shane could take it. Maybe this is his singular gift, some kind of specific intelligence he possesses.

“Let me—let me get a look at you,” Ryan says, the second Shane’s jaw gives the tiniest twinge of soreness. He pulls back so the head of his cock’s resting against Shane’s mouth, so Shane can only lick at it and stare up into Ryan’s dark eyes. Ryan strokes a finger down the length of his nose. “I’d really like to fuck you, if you want it.”

Luckily for them both, Shane’s had a good long time to consider whether he would ever want it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I do.”

It’s a scramble from there, a messy, uncoordinated jumble of limbs together and stumbling to the bed and Ryan’s stomach flexing under his hands.

Getting out of the tux is a nightmare. Shane could barely get into it stone-cold sober, let alone sleep-deprived and drunk on adrenaline and need, and honestly Ryan’s a hindrance rather than a help because he’s so desperate to get to skin that he’s forgotten how buttons work.

And from there, more things that are familiar. The hard pulse of Ryan in his hand. Ryan’s thighs, wrapped around his own, then spreading to bracket his hips and rub their cocks together. His whispered noises, groans and laughs and murmured words of encouragement.

And things that are still new: Ryan lifting his legs, pressing fingers behind his balls, slick with Vaseline. Shane hadn’t quite counted on how long it would take from beginning to end, the process of getting ready. Ryan’s infinitely more patient than he ever was as a dance instructor, easy with words of reassurance and praise and so careful to make sure Shane’s interest doesn’t flag.

Many minutes and three fingers later, Shane’s sweaty and shaking on his hands and knees. Ryan’s crooking his fingers, searching for something, and Shane can feel his own abdominal muscles jerking every time he gets close.

“What are you doing?” he asks through gritted teeth. Here he is again, right at the brink of too much.

“Honestly I’m not quite sure,” Ryan says. “I just know sometimes, when you’re really hot for it, there’s—"

Whatever Ryan’s searching for, he finds it then. Shane’s whole body goes taut, then snaps and vibrates like a bow with an arrow loosed from it. He yells, half-into the pillow, and Ryan has to shift against him and clap a hand over his mouth.

“Ry,” he says, breathing hard.

“Yeah, I know,” Ryan says, kissing down his shoulders and back. “But it’s three in the morning, you’ve gotta be quiet or they’ll think you’re being murdered and call the cops.”

He does the thing with his fingers again, fingertips brushing against some spot in Shane that he definitely never learned about in Anatomy and Physiology—and then again and again until Shane’s a squirming, leaking, useless mess of a person.

“Okay, now,” Shane says, feeling his body convulse in on itself. “Please, now, Ryan, come on already.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ryan agrees, panting, nudging Shane over so they’re face to face.

Another thing that’s new about sex with Ryan: the connection between Shane’s body and brain and heart has never been this acute. He’s a logical person, he lives mostly in his head. Sometimes he gives himself over to emotion and lets himself feel things deeply. Sometimes, like this summer, he tests the limits of his physical body and discovers new things it can do.

But not once, as far as he can remember, has anything tied together all these discrete parts of himself into one big ball of indiscriminate _feeling_ like this. Sex has always been pleasurable, but not until this second—Ryan pressing into him, biting his lip and shaking his head at the feeling, nudging his forehead down against Shane’s shoulder as he bottoms out—has Shane wanted to come and cry and write the next fucking Great American Novel about it all at once.

He can’t believe he almost made a different choice. He can’t believe he almost made the conscious decision to walk away from it.  

“Oof,” he says, just because hyperbolic understatement is one of his things. “Hi.”

“ _Oof hi_ yourself,” Ryan says, going nose to nose with Shane and bracing his arms over Shane’s head. “Can I move?”

Shane tests with little movements of his hips, but there’s no discomfort there, only fullness and a renewed sense of urgency.

“I don’t know, can you?”

Ryan snorts. “And to think you used to be sweet. Really, may I?”

“Yeah, you better, or I’ll probably die,” Shane says.

“Can’t have that on my conscience,” Ryan groans, and he wraps a hand around Shane’s thigh for leverage and goes for it.

For all the time the preparations took, it’s over so fast. He’s not exactly checking his watch, but it must be scarcely a minute or two before Ryan’s impeccable rhythm is starting to falter, a sure sign he’s close. Shane works a hand between their bodies to get his fist around his own cock, right on the edge too, and Ryan rucks back on his heels to watch, pulling Shane’s hips back with him.

“Oh, that’s good,” he says. “Shit, Shane.”

Shane comes then, with an abruptness that takes him by surprise. He closes his eyes through it, thrusting up into his fist and back down onto Ryan, and he’s only just got his eyes open again when Ryan’s surging down to kiss him.

Barely a handful of long, hard strokes and Ryan’s moaning into his mouth and coming, making a mess of them both. He nestles into Shane’s neck, right by his ear, and mumbles half-formed thoughts: _baby_ and _love_ and _god_ and other words Shane can’t quite make out.

Shane feels _accomplished_ , which is stupid because he really didn’t do much. Accomplished, and full to the brim with happiness, and also sort of like he needs to shower and brush his teeth and sleep for a month.

“I think I need a vacation to recover from my vacation,” he says. Ryan laughs, making a face as he pulls out, wiping sweat from his brow and flicking it into Shane’s face.

“Yeah, you really worked hard just there. It’s been a real tough summer for you, all that lounging by the lake and dancing and fucking and eating steak somebody else cooked for you.”

“Also growth,” Shane protests. “I turned from a sad yuppie into a _whole person_ in three months. That’s very taxing.”

“You’re still a yuppie, you’re just happier,” Ryan teases. “You can take the guy out of the chinos, but you can’t take the chinos out of the guy. Even now you’re worrying about your tux getting wrinkled on the floor. I can see you doing it.”

“Yeah, well.” Shane doesn’t have a comeback for that, because it’s true. In his defense, he might not be able to afford a new one for a long time.

“Come on,” Ryan says, pushing him nearly off the bed. “Hang your shit up. And then a shower and sleep and greasy diner breakfast.”

“And then?”

“And then,” Ryan says, his eyes glinting, “we go west, young man.”

*

It’s early on a cool morning in early September when Shane Madej buckles his seatbelt to begin the first real autumn of the rest of his life.

The year is 1963, he is twenty-two years old, and for the first time ever he doesn’t know for sure what’s next. The world’s wide open for him. It’s stranger than he thought it could be, and sometimes crueler and less fair. But it’s also so much bigger, and he doesn’t have to face any of it alone.

 


End file.
